Dear Gazelle readers and community,

As the end of the year approaches, we take this opportunity to both look back on what we have accomplished this year and to look forward and plan for improvements in the next. It is with the intention to reflect and progress that we write this piece to you, our readers. As the incoming Editors-in-Chief of The Gazelle, we want to introduce our vision for our time together.

Over the past year, The Gazelle has continued its development as an upstanding, relevant publication that contributes immensely to and supports NYU Abu Dhabi and its community. We have continued to be a voice of the students, be it for opinions on university policies, perspectives on international politics or even article illustrations, which NYUAD students keep producing at a high standard. Interactive media is developing at The Gazelle and so are our social media platforms. Most importantly, however, has been the noteworthy publications of the past year. Student privacy has been put on top of the university’s agenda after multiple articles with varying opinions were published on bag searches in residence halls, sexual harassment on campus has been put to question, the satire team let the community chuckle at issues that can be difficult to write about in other contexts and much more. It is with articles like these that The Gazelle continually asserts the necessity of its own existence. All the while, our cooperation with On Century Avenue and Washington Square News has been improved. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with publications from across the NYU network next year.

These are all elements of The Gazelle that we are committed to preserving. We would also like to thank the current executive board of The Gazelle for training us and handing down to us an excellent publication. We are deeply thankful to you for your time and dedication this year.

Looking forward, there are several significant changes we plan to bring with us to The Gazelle. To begin, we will be hiring our new team at the beginning of the year; an application will go live toward the end of August. We will be looking for dedicated and enthusiastic editors, deputies and staff writers. Our goal is to facilitate the professional development of our writers through mentorship and hands on practice with writing, editing and pitching ideas. Mentorship and improving each member’s writing skills will continue to be cornerstones of The Gazelle’s project. To do this, we need a group of committed writers who will bring unique stories, perspectives and opinions to share, who are not necessarily interested in the editing process. Training writers and giving NYUAD students a platform to express themselves is an important part of our mission at The Gazelle. Joining our team as a staff writer is a great way to share your opinion, and through the feedback you will be given by The Gazelle’s editors, it is also an opportunity to improve and refine your writing skills.

We will also proactively work to establish a large video desk. There is a pool of NYUAD students interested in film and journalism who, for various reasons, are not currently working with The Gazelle. We want to make this pool smaller. Therefore, we will be reaching out to students whom we would like as part of our video desk, while at the same time emphasizing our desired expansion of the desk in our application opening and in general outreach. The news and features desks especially will be working more closely with the video desk so The Gazelle can broaden its journalistic horizon beyond written journalism and into reporting. In this way, short videos will accompany articles when relevant and both the quality of The Gazelle and its ability to let its staff improve and broaden their journalistic skills will improve. At the same time, we want to acknowledge the work of the current video desk and uphold its current commitment to long, high-quality video pieces, alongside its new cooperation with other desks.

These are all measures to improve what we see as being an already strong, independent and important publication. Finally, we would like to emphasize that The Gazelle will remain an independent publication held to high journalistic standard in the next year. We also encourage you, our readers, to give us any inputs or suggestions for the future development of The Gazelle. Feel free to contact either of us at editors@thegazelle.org.

We look forward to spending our year with The Gazelle, publishing more important articles, interesting perspectives, good (and bad) reviews, challenging opinions, fun satire and much more.

Thank you to everyone who had a hand in bringing us to where we are now, and we look forward to all the adventures the next year has to bring.

Yours,