Hello, new students. Now that you’ve registered for classes and toured the campus (again),… Hello, new students. Now that you’ve registered for classes and toured the campus (again), you’re all set to begin your college career.

Unbeknownst to you, there’s still one more really important thing you need to know about the University of Pittsburgh: The Pitt News.

OK, sure, this is a really self-important column all about how great The Pitt News is, but it’s important that you, member of the class of 2011, know what we’re all about.

It’s most important to note that we’re totally independent. Our fantastic business division brought in more than $1 million last year so we can bring the news to you five days a week.

Secondly, the entire staff of The Pitt News is comprised of students. Our business division has about 25 people, and there are about 100 people who work on the editorial end, from writers to photographers to cartoonists to copy editors.

This year marks The Pitt News’ 98th year of publication, which is kind of a big deal, and The Pitt News has been publishing five days a week since 1998.

Although those little tidbits are pretty awesome, we couldn’t put out the paper without your help. If you’re a leader or a member of a campus organization, make sure to let us know when something big is going on in your organization. Send us a press release via fax at (412) 648-8491, or via e-mail to [email protected].

If you don’t feel like jumping through hoops of faxes and e-mails, you’re more than welcome to contact me directly at (412) 648-7985. I want to know what you think of The Pitt News and what we could do to make it better for you.

If using a telephone is a little intimidating and you’d rather stick with communicating exclusively via the Internet, you can e-mail me at [email protected].

Or, if you’re really bold and you’d like to see us in person, swing by our offices at 434 William Pitt Union. There’s almost always someone here, and we’re a pretty friendly bunch, so feel free to come up and chat if you want to learn more about The Pitt News or the University in general.

Think you might like to work for The Pitt News? Come by and see us. I’m here every day from roughly 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the summer, but if you happen to be in town on Tuesday, swing by and meet not only me, but also some of the other editors and staff. We publish on Wednesdays in the summer, so Tuesdays are a busy day when you can get the true newsroom feel.

The best thing about having a daily student-run newspaper at your university is that you can come work for us. Working at The Pitt News is a great way to gain experience in myriad fields.

We use Adobe InDesign and Photoshop to put our paper together, so if you’re interested in graphics or design, working here is a great way to gain experience.

Although Pitt doesn’t have a formal journalism major, it’s still easy to beef up your resume with clips from The Pitt News. Although journalism classes are a great way to get started, I’ve learned more while working here than I have in any journalism class. We need writers for all four sections: news, opinions, A’E and sports. As an added bonus, we’ll even pay you a little for your work.

As someone with little to no artistic talent, nothing impresses me more than the ability to draw. If you happen to have that ability, come work for us as an editorial cartoonist or a comic strip artist.

Plus, it doesn’t matter whether or not you have any actual newspaper experience. Editor of your high school paper? Super. Come see us. However, even if your only experience with newspaper journalism is occasionally reading The New York Times online, that’s fine, too. Plenty of people step into The Pitt News with no experience, but it’s not an issue because we’re more than willing to train you.

There’s a lot of history at The Pitt News, and it’s certainly no small operation, so we welcome you to help us out in any way you can, whether it’s complaining in a letter to the editor or e-mailing us a press release.

Good luck, class of 2011. The best four (or five, or six) years of your life are quickly approaching, so enjoy every minute of it.

Hail to Pitt!

Annie Tubbs Editor in Chief