Category: DPAA Beat

Hi everyone!

My name is Pia, and I am the Executive Editor of The DP.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us make this year great so far. I look forward to connecting more this semester and hopefully meeting you one day! As some of you may know, the DP has been working with Mike Wisniewski to organize weekly alumni critiques of our content across DP, Street, UTB, and multimedia departments, which I share at our weekly Editorial Board meetings. I’ve found them really helpful myself when I was a News Editor last year mentoring many new reporters, and our current editors continue to find them valuable.

Based off of recent student feedback, I am hoping to reorganize the program with a new and improved process for our weekly alumni critiques, where each publication (and the multimedia departments) have a consistent set of alumni critiquing the work throughout the semester.

An ideal setup could look like this:

Total alums involved for weekly critiques:

6 alums for DP critiques (2 for News, 2 for Opinion, and 2 for Sports)
2 alums for Street critiques
1-2 alums for UTB critiques
1-2 for company-wide Design and Multimedia critiques

Each of these alums would ideally be responsible for handing back weekly critiques during a semester for their respective publication in advance of weekly Editorial Board meetings, which typically occur on Sunday evenings. This new arrangement would be to make students more comfortable in engaging with specific alums who have expertise in the content they critique (rather than one alum for all kinds of different content) and would hopefully make students feel as if they have a coordinated editorial mentor for their work.

They’re excited about making this adjustment officially happen, and I’d love all the support possible in coordinating this new critique program! A BIG thank you to the alums who have volunteered to critique this semester already! We really appreciate it, and I can’t express that enough.

Please feel free to email me at singhp@thedp.com or Mike at mike.wisniewski83@gmail.com if you’d like to join this team of critiquers.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Kindly,

Pia Singh

Executive Editor

Dear DP Alumni Community,

Nice to meet you!

My name is Allie Fehr, and I am a second-year transfer student at Penn and the new DP Development Assistant. I am extremely excited to be working with the DP Development team to create and enhance efforts to generate DP alumni philanthropic support. 

When I decided to spend the next three years of my undergraduate education at Penn, I knew I wanted to witness and join the DP’s legacy as one of the nation’s top college news organizations. Having loved my own experience writing for my high school’s small but mighty newspaper, I am passionate about supporting student journalism. 

As your host of the DPAA beat, I will continue to share the stories and achievements of DP alumni. While celebrating the past, I will also document the story of the DP today by pulling back the curtain on production nights and spotlighting current staff. My goal is to emphasize how your philanthropic support directly contributes to the production of impactful journalism and meaningful experiences for Penn students.  

You give so much time, money and mentorship to the DP, so we hope to give back to you by making our network an interactive one. Be sure to follow the DPAA Facebook, Twitter and Instagram so you do not miss out on the latest DP news, events, archival dives, merch giveaways and more. 

I hope to see and talk to many of you this year!

Sincerely,

Allie Fehr

Development Assistant