As many of you have noticed, Friday’s paper has been a little different this semester.
In fact, Wildcat Weekend is practically its own publication. It has a different name and a different mission from the usual Daily Wildcat. It usually has no news section and is focused solely on things you can do Friday through Sunday. In terms of content and design, it’s edgier and more like a magazine.
Since the semester is wrapping up, we’d like your opinion on how Wildcat Weekend has or hasn’t worked for you. Does having a weekend-themed publication on Friday make sense?
For many people on campus, the weekend kicks off on Thursday. Fewer people do so much as pause at the newsstands on Friday, since fewer classes are offered that day.
Would Thursday be a better day for Wildcat Weekend?
We’ve also talked about whether or not Wildcat Weekend is able to cover a good mix of different types of weekend lifestyles.
In the beginning, the paper was pretty heavily focused on the over-21 crowd and off-campus activities. But age and geography are limitations. Plus, not everyone wants their Saturday night to be a wild one.
We wanted to appeal to people who look to grab a good cup of coffee after a poetry reading, and to readers who want their only memory of the weekend to be that it was awesome.
So we talked about how our weekend coverage could be more diverse and include a wider range of activities, both on- and off-campus.
It’s still a work in progress, but the hope is that soon Wildcat Weekend will find its voice as the Daily Wildcat’s alt-weekly style, snarky sister.
A few people have pointed out that some of these efforts have been a bit tasteless. That’s a side effect of developing a publication’s personality — the growing pains of creating Wildcat Weekend’s identity.
The question is this: Should we continue to see Wildcat Weekend through its gawky teenager phase or should we cut it loose?
This semester, because of Wildcat Weekend, we’ve run arts and lifestyle content on only one page on Mondays. That doesn’t give us much room to cover arts and lifestyle stories that don’t have a weekend connection.
One option we’ve been weighing as we go into next semester is to start running arts and lifestyle content every day in the paper, just like we do with news, sports and opinions.
We want to cover campus culture to the best of our abilities. So how’s it working for you? Does the Friday paper help you plan your weekend? Do you want to see arts and lifestyle content daily?
— Bethany Barnes is the readers representative and managing editor for the Arizona Daily Wildcat. She can be reached at maned@wildcat.arizona.edu or on Twitter via @BetsBarnes .
