Welcome to the brand new EasternEcho.com! We are all very proud of our new Web site and hope you all enjoy it. In addition to looking a lot better than our old Web site, it’s also far more functional and organized and will make it easier for us to include multimedia content, which we hope to produce more of in the future.

This semester will be a major transition period for the Echo, as we make the change from publishing three issues a week to two. Obviously, for a student publication change is inevitable from semester to semester. But this year the changes we are making aren’t due to graduating staff, but rather are a result of a determination to improve and streamline the product we create.

For me, this means re-evaluating the purpose of the Life section and bringing the focus back to where it always should be: the campus and the community. Gone are the days of running an abundance of music and movie reviews. Instead, I hope to focus on features, event coverage and profiles of individuals and groups, both at EMU and in Ypsilanti. After all, this is the “Life” section, and you don’t have to go very far on this campus or in the community to find people who are squeezing the most out of theirs.

Of course, if it wasn’t for you, our readers, we wouldn’t be publishing a newspaper at all and it should always be our goal to produce content that is relevant and interesting to you. Thank you very much for your continuing support, we hope you enjoy everything we have in store for you this semester!

-Jeff Gerding, Life Editor