For more than 50 years, the Observer has been the forum for the very best of the journalism students here at NECC to showcase their talent and obtain real-world work experience.

Unlike that “real world,” the Observer begins each year with a large percentage of new staff members who need to learn the ropes.

This includes learning photo and design software that may be previously unfamiliar to them and cultivating new relationships with sources.  

Sometimes, this leads to a rocky start for the first few editions of the year and has made it difficult for our paper, and our website, to reach its full potential.  

In response to this, veteran members of the Observer staff have been on campus all summer following important news and changes.  

New staff has been hard at work training and a web editor has been added to ensure the most up to date content on our social media sites.  We are bringing back a Campus Life page and a page that is Just For Fun, and we look forward to running your cartoons, pictures, letters to the editor and story ideas.  This newspaper is for you.  Look for all of the changes and let us know what you think.   

I am honored to work with this talented team of journalists.