Editors gathered Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in the basement of Murrow Hall to prepare for the upcoming semester of producing The Daily Evergreen, WSU’s independent student newspaper.

The three-day training happens at the beginning of every semester and is affectionately called “boot camp” because editors get whipped into shape for their new jobs.

Boot camp is our chance to get to know our fellow Evergreeners and learn about managing reporters and photographers, engaging with our readers on social media and laying out pages using Adobe InDesign.

We learn from our editor-in-chief and managing editor, but we also learn from each other. Many of the editors who are in the newsroom have been here for multiple semesters and have held multiple positions.

This training is also an opportunity for instructors in the Murrow College and Evergreen alum to teach editors. Outside speakers came for workshops about public records, solutions journalism and other topics pertaining to student journalists.

This semester’s boot camp marked a change for The Daily Evergreen — during the training, our multimedia team did a complete overhaul of our newspaper’s design. Our new look will be more modern, and — we hope — more accessible and enjoyable for our readers.

The revamp features a more modern look as we bring the newspaper into not just the new year, but a new decade.

Every aspect of the newspaper, from section headers and graphics right down to the fonts we use, was examined to find any room for improvement. The more modern design features were born out of a culmination of editors’ ideas.

Various versions of every page template were created and between bouts of training new staff members, senior editors gathered to give feedback on the new Evergreen design.

We recognize print newspapers are, unfortunately, dying out. As an organization, we are fighting not only to maintain our independence from the university, but to keep our readership, both in print and online.

We are constantly trying to learn and improve our craft so we can better serve our readers. There is no clearer example of this than boot camp — we come back to school almost a week early so we can improve our skills as editors and writers.

An old journalism saying repeated around the newsroom says our mission should be to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

If we aren’t doing that, all we ask is that you let us know.