Now that the graduating class of Michigan Daily journalists, editors and developers have said their heartfelt goodbyes, it’s time for a chorus of enthusiastic “hellos.” After a staff-wide election on Nov. 12 and several section-specific elections throughout the past couple of months, The Michigan Daily is delighted to announce its 131st editor in chief and managing editor team.
The editor in chief and the editorial page editors were elected by all sections of The Daily on Nov. 12. The managing editor and digital managing editor were appointed by the editor in chief and approved by The Daily’s management desk on Nov. 28. The management desk also chose a new editor of The Statement, the paper’s weekly magazine.
Editor in Chief: Jasmin Lee
LSA junior Jasmin Lee will serve as The Daily’s editor in chief for the 2022 calendar year. Lee previously served as a senior news editor overseeing campus life and student government coverage, as well as a member of Culture, Training and Inclusion. Lee said she has wanted to run for EIC since she began writing as a freshman and one of her main goals is to make The Daily more accessible to students on campus.
“In the past, The Daily, (has seemed) like this big intimidating (place),” Lee said. “Although the work we do is important, and does take a lot of time, I just want to make sure either the ability to produce work on The Daily, or the ability to have access to the quality journalism that we produce, is open to everyone.”
Managing Editor: Paige Hodder
LSA junior Paige Hodder will serve as the paper-wide managing editor for 2022 and will work with Lee to create a community among Daily staffers. Hodder previously served as a summer news editor, a Daily staff reporter and contributor for The Daily Weekly Podcast.
“One of my biggest goals is to recapture and redefine the kind of community that we create at The Daily,” Hodder said. “A lot of that has been lost to COVID it can feel really disconnected these days and I want to bring us back together as a newsroom, but then also cultivate a culture in the newsroom of listening and acknowledgement of shared knowledge.”
Digital Managing Editor: Aya Salim
As The Daily’s second ever digital managing editor, LSA junior Aya Salim will be responsible for overseeing The Daily’s online presence and the six digital sections: photo, video, web, design, audience engagement and podcast.
Before being appointed to her new position by Lee, Salim served as the managing design editor and worked on the video section as a videographer as well. After working in two different digital sections throughout her three semesters on staff, Salim said she plans to facilitate cross-section projects and support The Daily’s ongoing “online-first” initiative.
“I’m really excited to see not only how print and digital sections can collaborate … but also just how the digital sections themselves can collaborate and do cool different projects,” Salim said. “And also how the digital aspects of The Daily can also contribute to accessibility.”
Business Manager: Aaron Santilli
LSA sophomore Aaron Santilli, former senior account executive, will lead The Daily’s business operation section for 2022.
Santilli said one of his main goals as business manager is to make sure staffers were compensated equitably for the work they produced.
“(My goal is) ensuring that all employees of The Daily are paid (and) treated fairly for the work that they’re producing. So you know, I’m going to continue that in cohesion with Jasmin, the editor in chief, as well as Paige the (managing) editor,” Santilli said.
Arts: Sabriya Imami and Lillian Pearce
The arts section will be led by LSA juniors Sabriya Imami and Lillian Pearce, the 2022 managing arts editors. Both of them have previous experience as arts writer and Imami served as the film beat editor while Pearce served as the book beat editor. A major part of their platform is to consistently put their writers at the forefront. To help arts writers make the most of their time on staff, Pearce said she and Imami plan to host workshops on leveraging Daily experiences in the job market.
“As managing editors, Sabriya and I are planning out different workshops we could do to help (arts staffers) improve their internship opportunities or their interview skills,” Pearce said. “So we are really excited thinking about how we can support writers and Daily arts people in different (aspects) of their lives.”
Imami said she and Pearce also want to produce more content featuring the local art scene to encourage the greater Washtenaw County community to read and contribute to arts articles.
“There’s a huge music scene in Ann Arbor that we wanted to highlight and even all the local bookstores and booksellers, just to uplift the Ann Arbor community too,” Imami said.
Audience Engagement: Evan DeLorenzo and Zoe Storer
LSA junior Evan DeLorenzo and LSA sophomore Zoe Storer will serve as the 2022 audience engagement managing editors. DeLorenzo has served as a senior editor for audience engagement and an academics reporter for the news section. Storer worked as an audience engagement assistant editor as well as the audience engagement co-managing editor for summer 2021.
DeLorenzo said the audience engagement section is responsible for keeping the University of Michigan community informed on The Daily’s content.
“I just really love the thrill of breaking news and feeling a part of some online community. It brings a sense of importance and purpose to my life,” DeLorenzo said. “It’s more than just like tweeting captions and whatnot, we’re bringing good content to the people.”
Storer said one of her main goals as co-managing editor is to build cohesion within the audience engagement section because editors and staffers often have different experiences and responsibilities.
“People who work on (our) newsletter have a very different experience than people who work on our Instagram or Facebook and Twitter,” Storer said. “So kind of (just) bringing all those groups together and then…continuing to create a platform where people in the campus community can find the most important news and book reviews and all that good stuff.”
Copy: Caroline Atkinson and Ethan Patrick
LSA juniors Caroline Atkinson and Ethan Patrick will be taking over as the 2022 copy chiefs. Both Atkinson and Patrick have previously served as senior copy editors and summer 2021 copy chiefs. Atkinson has also written for the arts section while Patrick has written Daily sports pieces. Patrick said their main goal is to restructure the copy section to give the senior copy editors greater responsibility and flexibility.
“We are restructuring copy a little bit to try to make it less susceptible to burnout,” Patrick said. “One of our goals is to increase the power and responsibility of the senior copy editors … so we hope it’s more exciting for them because it’s a little more responsibility on their part, but it’s also just going to be easier for their schedule.”
Atkinson said the planned restructure will also allow her and Patrick to spend more time looking holistically at each article to ensure all published content is polished, cohesive and engaging.
“It’s going to allow (the copy chiefs) to sort of take a step back and look at each article (from) a bigger point of view and look for readability and cohesion and think about what actually should get past copy to be published each night,” Atkinson said.
Culture, Training and Inclusion: Andy Nakamura and Ripley Newman
LSA sophomores Ripley Newman and Andy Nakamura will co-chair The Daily’s culture, training and inclusion section for 2022. Newman previously served as a CTI liaison while Nakamura worked as a Michigan in Color columnist and a CTI member.
Newman said one of her main goals as CTI co-chair is to have specific accountability measures for staffers when they make mistakes.
“We’re trying to focus on restorative justice and so when people do make mistakes …. there are systems in place in writing to make sure they are held accountable and it does not happen again,” Newman said
Nakamura said he wanted to create a more in-depth hiring process for new staffers as well as provide more opportunities for editors to give staffers feedback.
“We’re looking at developing a more vetted hiring process in order to make sure The Daily isn’t hiring people who will potentially cause harm to our readers through their articles or to other members of The Michigan Daily,” Nakamura said. “We also want to implement a feedback loop for all managing editors that can feel comfortable and safe giving feedback to their leadership, but also (a place where) editors can give feedback to columnists.”
Design: Sophie Grand and Erin Shi
The 2022 managing design editors will be LSA freshman Sophie Grand and Engineering junior Erin Shi. In her first semester on The Daily, Grand served as a senior layout editor as well as a layout designer. Grand said she hopes to facilitate a collaborative environment within the design section and distribute responsibilities evenly amongst the staff.
“I saw how there were all these different moving parts to the design section and I thought that there could be a lot more organization and community within it,” Grand said.
Shi has been an illustrator for the past three semesters. Having mostly worked remotely throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Shi said she is also committed to making the design section more of a community and getting to know the rest of the staff personally.
“One thing I noticed as an illustrator is I didn’t get to know any of the other illustrators or really meet any of them or the editors,” Shi said. “That’s why one of the things I want to push for is a stronger community.”
Michigan in Color: Jessica Kwon and Eliya Imtiaz
The Michigan in Color section will be led by LSA junior Jessica Kwon and Business junior Eliya Imtiaz. Imtiaz previously served as a columnist, senior editor and summer co-managing editor for Michigan in Color. Kwon worked as a columnist and a senior editor for Michigan in Color.
Imtiaz said one of her main goals as managing editor is to address burnout within the section and help create a strong and supportive community.
“Within MiC, I feel like there’s an added layer of explanation or context that we have to provide on the things that we do cover because it’s a lot of experiences from marginalized communities that I think hold a heavier weight,” Imitaz said. “We really want to encourage a platform or a space for people to be honest about where they are and really (be an) empathy-based community.”
In an email to The Daily, Kwon wrote she hopes to amplify voices of more marginalized identities of campus — both in and outside of Michigan in Color.
“Broadly speaking, I hope to one day leave MiC an even safer and stronger environment than when I entered it, and additionally I want us to recommit ourselves to collective community care and action,” Kwon wrote. “MiC, to me, is about empathy and love for one another in its true radical nature. This involves emotional recuperation for our staff, forging equity in our workplace, and highlighting socially responsible causes like on-campus events and mutual aid resources.”
News: Dominic Coletti and Kristina Zheng
LSA juniors Dominic Coletti and Kristina Zheng were elected by the news section to serve as the managing news editors for the coming year. Zheng just completed her tenure as both a senior news editor and an audience engagement senior editor. She said news plans to prioritize teaching staffers the skills they need to complete safe, in-person coverage.
“Dominic and I are really excited to help our section become more comfortable with reporting in person again, especially coming off a year and a half of completely remote production,” Zheng said.
Coletti has previously worked as a senior news editor as well as an assistant editor on both the news and audience engagement sections. Along with returning to in-person production, Coletti said he also wants to encourage staffers to work in the newsroom to rebuild the news community.
“We’re starting to see the (news) community kind of rebound from a year of virtual production,” Coletti said. “Getting that community back through in-person interaction, both professionally and personally, really means a lot to me, and it’s something I hope that we’ll be able to accomplish throughout this next year.”
Opinion: Julian Barnard and Shubhum Giroti
LSA sophomore Julian Barnard and LSA junior Shubhum Giroti will serve as the 2022 editorial page editors after being chosen in a staff-wide election. Both previously served as senior editors and columnists on the opinion section and Barnard worked as an assistant editor on audience engagement.
Giroti said one of their primary goals as editorial page editors is to put authors at the forefront of their publications and allow for growth within the section.
“We want to make sure that (authors) grow throughout the semester, throughout the year, throughout whatever time period they’re with us,” Giroti said. “Their writing grows, their voice grows, their impact on campus grows … we want to enable them to grow and to write the best version of content that they can physically produce.”
Barnard said he hopes the opinion section becomes more connected with the student body throughout their tenure, and one way he hopes to do so is by starting a new everyday advice column by experienced columnists.
“Opinion should be the best highest versions of all the conversations happening on campus every day,” Barnard said. “But the most common conversation on campus is like, ‘You should break up with your shitty boyfriend,’ and I think bringing that onto our page is something I’m really interested in.”
Photo: Grace Beal and Tess Crowley
LSA sophomores Grace Beal and Tess Crowley will be the 2022 managing photo editors. Both served as assistant photo editors and photo recruitment chairs during the fall 2021 semester and are excited to continue working together.
Beal said Crowley is one of her best friends and they are constantly texting each other about new ideas for the section. One of the main components of their combined platform, Beal said, is searching for new opportunities to further disseminate Daily photography.
“We really talked a lot about getting our photographers the credit they deserve,” Beal said. “They all put in so much time and effort to make these amazing photographs and we want to get more of their pictures in print and online.”
Crowley said the MPEs also plan to pursue collaboration within The Daily itself by organizing multimedia projects with different sections.
“We are super excited to meet … the leadership in different sections and then to collaborate with different sections more on bigger projects like the Anderson project we just worked on with news,” Crowley said.
Podcast: Doug McClure and Maxwell Rosenzweig
Pass the mic to LSA and Engineering junior Doug McClure and Information junior Maxwell Rosenzweig — the 2022 managing podcast editors. McClure and Rosenzweig have both previously served as content producers and senior editors for the podcast section.
Both incoming editors said they hope to expand the section’s audience in the coming year by increasing partnerships with other areas of The Daily.
“I’m really thinking about how the podcast section can branch out and collaborate with different parts of The Daily … to make our other podcasts stronger,” McClure said.
Rosenzweig said he also hopes the podcast section is able to produce content on a more regular basis to retain listeners from episode to episode. Prior to COVID-19 pandemic, the podcast section produced ‘mini-series’ to make content more cohesive within each of the section’s podcasts: Highway to Hail, the Daily Weekly, Arts Interrupted and Pass the MiC.
“I want to bring the mini-series back since if we’re gonna publish (podcasts) weekly I think the easiest way is to do a little mini-series,” Rosenzweig said.
Recruitment: Emily Blumberg
LSA sophomore Emily Blumberg will serve as The Daily’s second director for recruitment during the 2022 calendar year. Blumberg previously worked as an assistant news editor, Statement correspondent and an arts writer.
Blumberg said she hopes to recruit a more diverse set of staffers throughout her tenure.
“I think that a lot of people may have been interested in The Daily but didn’t really know what it was or how to join,” Blumberg said. “I’m looking forward to making recruitment a lot more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and reaching out to just as many organizations and people as possible.”
Sports: Jared Greenspan and Nicholas Stoll
The 2022 managing sports editors will be LSA junior Jared Greenspan and Business junior Nicholas Stoll. Greenspan and Stoll have combined experience covering a variety of sports — including softball, football and basketball — throughout the past two years. Greenspan was also a host on The Daily’s Highway to Hail podcast during the fall 2021 semester.
Greenspan said he and Stoll hope to launch a sports-specific newsletter during their tenure to keep the U-M community up to date on athletic accomplishments in every sport The Daily covers.
“We have plans to hopefully get a newsletter off the ground and to revamp the (Highway to Hail) podcast and just work closely with web and other sections to … continue making it the best sports section in the country,” Greenspan said.
Besides expanding their coverage of the University’s athletic teams, Stoll said he wants to support increased teamwork in the newsroom.
“I want us to have a culture where we feel like a family and are having fun together in the newsroom (and) out of the newsroom,” Stoll said.
Statement: Grace Tucker
LSA junior Grace Tucker will oversee The Statement – the Daily’s longform magazine that publishes every Wednesday. Tucker previously worked as a Statement columnist and a senior arts editor.
Tucker said one of her main goals during her tenure as managing editor is to tell more diverse stories and expand the perspectives the Statement publishes.
“The Statement has attracted a certain voice (in the past) and that is primarily white women,” Tucker said. “The most important thing on my platform is diversifying the stories that are being told in terms of racial identity, in terms of whether the student is living on campus or is commuting whether they’re work study student. I think diversity of identity is super crucial (to the Statement).”
Video: Hannah Elliott and Julia Raguckas
The video section has selected LSA sophomore Hannah Elliott and LSA junior Julia Raguckas to be co-managing video editors for 2022. Both Elliott and Raguckas have been a part of the video section for a year and have previously served as video editors.
Raguckas said joining the video section helped her find a sense of belonging on campus and she hopes to share the video community with all of the current and incoming staffers.
“I felt very connected to campus but also just video editing in general,” Raguckas said. “I feel like I developed a passion for it.”
Elliott said she has been amazed by how much the video section has grown in the past year. She said their term will focus on publishing content on multiple platforms — including their YouTube channel and Instagram reels — and creating unique video projects.
“We just hit (over 900) subscribers (on Youtube), which is really exciting for us because the video section actually started a couple years ago so we’re still really new,” Elliott said. “We’re continuing to work on audience engagement as well as lots of creative projects that make people want to keep coming back to our YouTube channel.”
Web: Dora Guo and Eric Lau
The 2022 managing online editors will be LSA junior Dora Guo and LSA sophomore Eric Lau. Guo served as the managing online editor this past summer and Lau has previously worked as a data journalist and web developer. Guo said the web team is currently planning to launch a new Michigan Daily mobile application in the coming semester.
“We believe that this will really open up a new and engaging way for our audience to consume Daily content,” Guo said.
Though their primary focus will be getting the app up and running during the first part of their tenure, Lau also emphasized his and Guo’s commitment to cross-section collaboration.
“We’ve done a pretty good job of (collaborating) this past year through the data stories that we’ve been doing with news and sports,” Lau said. “We want to both expand the number of sections that we collaborate with … and also the scope of the (stories) … to really make sure that we’re trying our best to create visually impactful things on the website.”
Daily News Editors Roni Kane and George Weykamp can be reached at ronikane@umich.edu and gweykamp@umich.edu.