Dear readers,

As The Daily Orange approaches its 50th year of independence, we created a mission statement and values statements to better define our goals and purpose as the independent student newspaper of Syracuse, New York. We have added these statements to our website’s About page.

We composed our mission statement to remind our current and future staff members of the impact The D.O. should have on our community, as well as provide you, our reader, with the standards we strive for and must be held to.

Our mission statement is as follows: The D.O. exists to serve our readers by gathering and sharing factual, relevant information with diligence and care. Through independent student journalism, we strive to share truthful, accurate and fair stories from the Syracuse and Syracuse University community, with a focus on amplifying the voices of community members. As an entirely student-run newsroom, The D.O. also aims to be a place where students can learn and gain experience in reporting, editing and telling stories across textual, visual and audio platforms.

We also chose a total of nine values —each of equal weight and importance to The D.O. — that are individually a big part of our newsroom’s culture. We split the nine values into three groups of three because the values we chose do not work alone — they build off one another and only when put together do they give The D.O. the possibility of reaching its fullest potential.

Our first set of values are community, curiosity and respect. The D.O. exists to serve our community, and we focus on amplifying the voices of its members through journalism. We seek two-way communication between ourselves and the rest of the community so that we can report on topics that community members care about and share information that they need to know.

Our respect for the community shapes the way we tell its stories, and we have respect for the people whose stories we tell and the topics we cover. We treat our sources, readers and each other with respect throughout the process of reporting, writing and editing a story — in our interviews, interactions, ethical decisions and coverage.

Curiosity also drives our work and is present in every step of pursuing and editing a story. We persistently seek the truth, ask questions and look for different perspectives, angles and story ideas.

Additionally, we value independence, justice and accountability in our newsroom. Since we became independent from Syracuse University in 1971, The D.O. has remained intent on using our independence to critically examine the university and ensure that the information we share is accurate, truthful and unbiased.

We actively seek to ensure everyone’s voice is heard, especially those who don’t typically have the means to share their stories or the audience to listen to their words. We hold those around us accountable for their actions, and we also hold ourselves accountable when we fall short of our best.

We also value diversity, inclusion and representation. The D.O. continuously works to improve the diversity of our newsroom and the stories we tell. We acknowledge that our newsroom will be at its best when it represents the diversity of the community it serves but that we have not reached that point yet.

We work to improve our newsroom’s diversity by surveying the diversity of our staff, analyzing our coverage’s representation of marginalized communities and gathering insight and feedback from our readers, while also publishing semesterly diversity reports to hold ourselves accountable in ensuring such change happens in our newsroom.

Although we just recently wrote down our mission and values, these statements reflect and build upon the purpose and priorities behind the work of generations of D.O. staffers. We want to continue the ways we’ve served our readers well and improve where we have failed to do so. With these statements now put into words and written on our website, we hope that we can do a better job of working toward the standards that we and the Syracuse community want to see us achieve.

Thank you for reading and for holding us to our promises,

Emily Steinberger, editor-in-chief 2021-22

Mandy Kraynak, managing editor 2021

Abby Weiss, digital managing editor 2021

Published on August 22, 2021 at 8:08 pm

Contact Mandy: [email protected] | @MandyKraynak