Dear alumni of The Daily Tar Heel,

I am so excited to welcome you to The Daily Tar Heel’s new alumni association. I am Paige Ladisic, the 2015-16 editor-in-chief of the DTH, and I wanted to let you in on some of the great things coming up for the DTH and dailytarheel.com.

We had a big fall semester here at the DTH. In August, we launched DTH At A Glance, our hand-curated daily newsletter, and three podcasts — Having It All, Fair Game and Press Coverage. In September, we hired 180 new staffers and recreated the digital desk, a desk completely devoted to social media, blogging and website management. In October, I traveled to Austin with University Editor Jane Wester and Copy Chief Alison Krug to accept a Newspaper Pacemaker from the Associated Collegiate Press, as well as a first place Best of Show for our website. Both were great rewards for our hard work last year and this year, and our team is so proud for our awards to earn a spot on the wall. And in November, we created our first online-only special collection of stories, all themed around topics of life and death.

And we’re planning for an even bigger and brighter spring semester. Our digital desk is expanding our reach to more social media platforms, and we are planning to publish a special issue on gender and sexuality. Our sports desk, after covering a historic football season, is preparing to cover what we hope will be an impressive basketball season, too.

But we can’t do it alone — and that is why we are so grateful for our alumni.

My staff and I want to thank all of you for the incredible support you have given us. From the encouraging cards and food when we were covering Dean Smith’s passing and then the Chapel Hill shooting, to the alumni who travel to Chapel Hill for staff development and critiques during the semester, we are incredibly grateful.

Sincerely,

Paige Ladisic

Thanks for visiting alumni.dailytarheel.com. You can join The Daily Tar Heel Alumni Association by registering on the site, where you will be able to learn news about the DTH, our extensive network of alumni and how to make a tax-deductible donation to The Daily Tar Heel.

You can also buy tickets for our first annual Alumni Homecoming and birthday celebration, which will be held Feb. 19-20, 2016. At the homecoming, you will be able to meet and network with other alumni and have the opportunity to meet and provide training for current DTH journalists. I hope to see you there!