One of the most remarkable stories in the news coverage of this year’s presidential election is the impact being made by college students across the country. Because of Pennsylvania’s late primary, students here at Penn have been relatively insulated from the candidates’ intense courtship of the youth vote in states such as Iowa. That said, no one with a television set or access to the internet could possibly ignore the media frenzy.With that in mind, the editors of the DP were interested in finding out exactly what Penn students are thinking about U.S. politics in general and the presidential election in particular. We published results of a scientific opinion research survey this past week on Tuesday 2/5 (pdf) and Wednesday 2/6 (pdf), coinciding with our comprehensive coverage of Super Tuesday.The survey was conducted over a period of four days (2/1-2/4) online. Invitations to participate were sent via e-mail to a random sample 3,000 undergraduate and graduate Penn students, netting 601 unique responses (and a +/- 4% margin of error, different for subgroups).

Unfortunately, due to space constraints, only a limited set of the results could be published in the paper. If you’re curious, you can download a full copy of the data summary here.

Super Tuesday and this past weekend’s primaries have left John McCain the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. In the tightening Democratic race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, however, Pennsylvania’s late primary might ultimately count quite a bit. This survey is, therefore, great insight into how campus will divide up come April 22.

P.S. Some might be interested in knowing that we used the software LimeSurvey.

Tuesday, before our first Story Conference, a few of us Daily Pennsylvanian editors went down to Penn Police Headquarters for a “Meet and Greet” with some of the communications people for Penn along with head of Penn Police Maureen Rush. Basically, these are the people that we interview and talk to for stories nearly constantly.Besides Rush, Lori Doyle, who you always see quoted as “University spokeswoman Lori Doyle,” was there, and a few more PR people and assistants whose names rarely make it into the paper, but who DP reporters talk to a lot.Also representing the Division of Public Safety were our two main contacts there, Allina Boutilier and Jared Hupp. Phyllis Holtzmann and Jeanne Leong were there too, from University Communications, and Tony Sorrentino, our main contact for stories about retail and real estate.The meeting isn’t really that interesting, it’s more or less just a chance for all of us to see each other face to face, and talk about how to keep lines of communication open throughout the year.

The very first story conference of the year was yesterday afternoon at 5:45PM. Story conference is the planning meeting for the next issue of the paper, where the news, sports, copy, photo, design, web, managing, and executive editors meet to go over all the content that will be appearing with the next issue of the paper. It also gives us a time to discuss what we did well and what we did poorly with the previous issue.

Usually Story Conference is at 4:00PM the night before the issue comes out, but for this first issue, since it’s so large and since we have the time, we had it an extra day in advance.

At many other papers, the equivalent meeting is called a budget meeting, I believe, because the primary purpose is to go over the number of inches of room the paper has for each section. At the DP we do that, but story conference is also our daily meeting to just talk about what every editorial department is doing and keep lines of communication open.I was pretty excited to see the paper begin to come together for the first time this year, and having seen a few of the stories our reporters are writing I’m very optimistic. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this first issue as much as I am, and if you don’t please, please, let us know what you thought so that we can work on doing a better job.Today, story conference was supposed to start at 4:15 according to our new schedule. But like with all new things, there are some rough spots to work out and we’re still waiting for it. Hopefully we can get going in the next 5 to 10 minutes. 

Dear reader,

My name is David Lei and I am the incoming Executive Editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian. It is my pleasure to introduce Inside the Newsroom, our shiny new blog.

It is often said that the DP lives, both figuratively and literally (have you seen our building, 4015 Walnut?), in an ivory tower. One of our most important goals, and why we have created this blog, is to address that perception by increasing transparency. At the end of the day, we exist to inform and serve the University of Pennsylvania community. I hope our musings and thoughts here will make this clearer to you, the reader.

Cheers,
David Lei

Executive Editor-elect
The Daily Pennsylvanian