Executive Editor Mia Gallo (left) and Editor-in-Chief Tara Lennon (right)
From Mia Gallo, Executive Editor:
From the minute Rory Gilmore of “Gilmore Girls” graced my screen, I knew I had discovered a passion that would fulfill me for years to come: the art of journalism. As I watched her idolize Christiane Amanpour and publish investigative pieces, I fell in love with the beauty of the field, the elegance of the way a headline sits on a page and the power of the press. Crafting a captivating story from virtually any circumstance is a skill that both Gilmore and the talented members of The Review’s staff mastered.
The Review has been a pillar of the University of Delaware community since 1882 and I am honored to serve as the Executive Editor for the 2022-2023 school year alongside Editor-in-Chief, Tara Lennon. A few weeks ago, I found myself thumbing through The Review archives and was so thankful that we have concrete documentation of how the university and the surrounding community have changed throughout the years. We do an important job on this campus and I am very excited to continue that historic work.
I first joined The Review during my sophomore year at the university. We were in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic so I met all my colleagues via Zoom and hadn’t entered our office located in the Perkins Student Center until this past fall. Writing for our Mosaic section allowed me to rediscover the journalistic voice that I had not tapped into since I graduated high school. This past year, The Review has granted me amazing opportunities from interviewing Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya to working alongside a group of some of the most talented writers and storytellers that this university has to offer.
As we navigated a return to campus this past year, we published four print issues of our paper that tackled both incredibly triumphant and painfully horrific events that occurred in the Newark area. With Kelsey Wagner and Simon Stewart at the helm, The Review accomplished great success in a year plagued with neverending uncertainty. Tara and I have been well prepared for the assumption of our positions by our talented predecessors and for their guidance, I am very grateful.
This next year, we hope to commit to printing physical issues of The Review more frequently in order to further inform the student body and all those in the surrounding community. We also plan to utilize social media more than ever before as the news industry continues to move into the digital age. This upcoming dedication to our social media presence is crucial in order to accomplish our goals of thoroughly reporting to the students at the university.
However vast our accomplishments, The Review is not perfect and likely will never be. Yet that will not keep us from trying. We plan to dedicate more coverage to stories that have been left off our pages in the past. We implore our valued readers to hold us accountable as we navigate these responsibilities as there is always room for improvement.
As we move forward into a very exciting year, I want to extend my sincerest congratulations to all of the graduating members of this past year’s staff who worked tirelessly to produce incredible content that was always fascinating to read. I have no doubt that they will continue to accomplish great things in their life post-graduation. We hope that this special graduation-themed issue serves as a reminder of your time at both the university and The Review. You have all played a part in shaping this paper into what it is today and you should be incredibly proud of all of your achievements.
I greatly look forward to continuing the hard work of previous executive editors and achieving substantial success in the coming year. No matter what this year throws at us, we are dedicated to telling the important stories of our university. I am so utterly thankful for this opportunity and I cannot wait to see all that our staff achieves this year.
Thank you,
Mia Gallo
From Tara Lennon, Editor-in-Chief:
In a little annex in Perkins Student Center, with heat rising from the Denny’s below, you can find the office of The Review. As students sip their Dunkin’ and type away on their laptops below, every Sunday and Wednesday members of The Review come together to rant about campus frustrations, such as the annoyance of parking in Newark, and to bounce ideas off of each other for stories that need to be told in the university and Newark community.
I came to be a part of this little cohort of students almost days into my freshman year at the university, when sitting around your peers without coverings over your mouth or at a six-foot distance wasn’t the norm. Through my initial experiences at The Review, I found student mentors that left a profound impression on me as well as learned the value of thinking deeply about what happens on our campus.
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic left that little office vacant for a year and a half, with a fridge allegedly full of molding food. During that time, however, we continued to bring you news from our remote locations and this year, we finally had the chance to return fully in-person to campus and the newsroom.
With a year of a full return to campus under our belt, I hope to bring you even better, more thorough news in the following year in my term as The Review’s Editor-in-Chief.
This year, The Review has brought to you the most pressing stories from various parts of campus, from the coverage of instances of gender-based violence on our campus to the unprecedented victories of the university’s athletics program.
However, we acknowledge that there are still stories we’ve left untold and voices that we have left out of the conversation. We hope that in the following year, you, the readers, will hold us accountable for our work and partake in conversations with us about what we can do better and where we can take the future of this newspaper.
I hope to lead this newspaper into improvements in our content and across our platforms. I want The Review to have an expanded social media presence, a more accessible and appealing website and more investigative coverage of our campus. I hope to place constant and thorough emphasis on diversity and inclusion in our coverage and within our organization. I want to deepen our connection to the student body and to increase our recognition on campus through an increase in printed issues.
I’d like to thank Kelsey Wagner and Simon Glover for their hard work this year, and for leaving The Review in a position that sets Mia, myself and the rest of our staff up for success. I’m beyond glad to have Kelsey continue on our staff next year and will miss Simon as he graduates, but can’t wait to see where the future takes him.
To the rest of our graduating seniors at The Review, I hope that you are so proud of the work that you’ve done this year at The Review and I’m so grateful for the chance I’ve had to work with you all this year. This graduation issue is an ode to you and the rest of the Class of 2022. I hope that this issue will serve as a memento of a wild, but memorable, four years at the university.
I cannot wait for another school year and am so grateful to be in this leadership position at The Review. If there is anything I’ve learned from the past three years, it’s that each year gets crazier than the next and with that, there’s only more to report on.
Best,
Tara Lennon
