It was just over six months ago that I first took over this job from our previous editor, Christina Frey. AUSU and I agreed to certain benchmarks to be attained in my first year and so half way through that seemed like a good time to get an update on how things are going.
The first, and most important goal, to my mind, was to increase the number of unique visitors to The Voice Magazine by about a thousand viewers. Over the last six months, we’ve had an average of 500 new viewers come in, with December seeing the largest jump. If I had to guess I would expect it was because in December Christmas holidays left people looking for something to do. Almost as important is to increase the number of articles that people read, as determined by looking at how many pages on the Voice people tend to access. The goal is to have people reading, on average, about half again the number of articles that they were already looking at. That’s improved by 37% so far, with each of you looking at, on average, between 1.8 and 2 pages per visit before, a number That’s increased to between 3.3 and 3.5. So. It’s a start.
But I’m hopeful that this month we’ll start to see that number increase even more as we bring in yet another writer. Samantha Stevens has started to do music reviews of more current/popular music here at The Voice Magazine. The idea is that this will complement The Mindful Bard’s review of the eclectic and unusual, so that no matter what your tastes are, you’ll find something new in each issue of the voice.
Also over the past six months, we’ve had our first internal readership survey in several years, moved to a new e-mail reminder system that allows us to use graphics and colours, brought in a couple new writers, started a couple of new columns, including the Meeting The Minds column, which this week talks to Dr. Karen Nielsen from the Women’s and Gender Studies Centre at AU, and also started to refocus the paper toward post-secondary issues, such as Barbara Lehtiniemi’s article this week on lost exams. There’s more work to be done on that front yet, but, again, we’re only six months in.
But we need more than that. we’re also looking for input from you. Whether It’s as a letter to the editor, where you tell me how I’m completely off the mark when I talk about politics, or perhaps a short letter to Barb Godin looking for some advice on a sticky situation you don’t think you can talk to your friends about. I also want to know what kind of articles you’d like to see, or not to see. While I’m currently making slow steps toward getting the Student Survey put together to help tell me these things, feel free to get ahead of the game and write me directly. Maybe you think these editorials are a waste of time and space and would love to see a new comic put in its place instead. Or perhaps It’s the reverse.
Not only do I want your input into what goes into The Voice Magazine, I also want your writing to go into it as well. Six months in and this issue of The Voice Magazine has 22 pages which span everything from professional editor Christina M. Frey’s column on preposition and object use, to author S.D. Livingston’s exploration of technological developments, Hazel Anaka’s look at every day life, and Wanda Waterman’s explorations of music, films, books, and their creators. But, to my mind, It’s still missing you. Help me change that.
