WEST LIBERTY, W.VA. Oct. 4, 2022 — West Liberty University’s student run news organization, The Trumpet, is going through several new changes this semester. The news organization is under the direction of all new leadership and created a new dynamic way of sharing news stories with the Hilltop community, relying completely on a digital format.
The new Editor-in-Chief Brianna Hamon is a senior majoring in public relations and minoring in journalism. Hamon will graduate in December. Serving as an active part of The Trumpet staff since 2020, Hamon has worked as a news editor intern and assistant editor prior to taking over as editor.
The Trumpet also has a new faculty advisor this semester, Dr. Richard Talbert, who joined WLU this fall as a visiting professor of communications in the College of Liberal and Creative Arts.
“As a freshman, I remember visiting The Trumpet at the organizational fair and thinking I would not be experienced enough to write for them. So, getting to lead The Trumpet staff this semester is both an honor and surreal experience for me,” Hamon said.
She continued on explaining how the new position comes with many rewards and responsibilities. Hamon said she is excited to gain skills in managing a small media organization through editing and writing campus news.
New changes to The Trumpet this semester include more focus on digital publishing through The Trumpet website and social media — meaning the organization has decided not to focus on creating a digital layout.
Hamon said, “The benefits of eliminating The Trumpet’s past newspaper layout allows for contributing writers to spend more time focusing on their stories and gives them the freedom to publish content in a timely manner for our audience.”
With this change, the student newspaper will be changing the appearance of their social media platforms to appeal to their audience by using graphics and frequent posts about new stories being published.
“Our mission as a staff is to inform the students and staff on this campus, so our goal is to publish fresh content that grabs their attention and makes them press the link to our stories as they see it on their feed,” Hamon said.
With all of these new changes, Talbert said he has enjoyed working with Hamon through the process of updating The Trumpet’s way of providing student produced news stories and he looks forward to seeing what the news crew will accomplish in the future.
“Brianna has been fantastic as far as taking charge of The Trumpet and determining what should go forward and how often we should meet and the stories we should work on. Even to the point of the fine details of guiding the new writers,” Talbert said.
The Trumpet meets every Tuesday at 3 p.m. in room 112 of the Fine Arts Building. All majors are welcome to join and no prior experiencing in writing news is required. The staff is looking for students interested in reporting news, taking photographs, creating graphics or filming video.
If you’re interested in following along with student produced news content, visit The Trumpet’s website at thetrumpetwlu.org or downloading the College News Source app in the Apple or Google Play Store. The student news organization also has an Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. All of those links are available on the website linked above.
Editor’s Note: The Trumpet is not associated with the Office of Media Relations. It operates as a student club, under the supervision of a faculty advisor, and is open to all majors.