As an arts section of a student newspaper, we are always changing to reflect the needs of our audience and community.

Luckily for us, we’re based in Madison, a city  that is home to a vibrant arts scene both on and off campus. We feel that we’ve been doing a good job of covering that scene, however, we want to do better. People are doing amazing things in many different mediums in Madison, and as many people as possible should hear about them.

To better accomplish this, we’re announcing a few tweaks and additions to our section we believe will improve both the local coverage of our section, as well as the quality as well.

‘Conversation Starter’

As you may have noticed in our first issue of the semester, we have a new column called “Conversation Starter.” As our explainer stated, we hope these Q&As will serve as a way for us and everyone to better get to know our members of the communities who are making waves. We will be doing them on a biweekly basis, in addition to our regular weekly profiles of artists and business owners.

Concert previews to be moved to online

Alongside this, we are moving our concert preview of visiting acts to be online exclusives. Two years ago we decided album reviews of national artists made more sense as online stories, and we’re now doing the same for concert previews.  

This will allow us to dedicate more space to profiles of local artists, as well as for those profiles to be more in depth. Nothing, however, about these previews are going to change in terms of quality or quantity.

Changes to ‘What’s On Tap’

‘What’s On Tap’ is one of the arts section’s oldest institutions and it’s not going anywhere. That being said, a section focused only on beer can grow monotonous, and as a result we are opening up the column to be about alcohol culture in general, whether it be beer, booze or wine.

This along with the other changes will allow us to do more stories on Madison and Wisconsin’s players in alcohol, as well as do a greater variety of pieces, such as our exposé on the old fashioned cocktail from this issue.

Conclusions

In general, we greatly value our readers, and hope you’ll stay tuned for these exciting changes to The Badger Herald Arts section as well as the evolution of our newspaper on the whole.

Cheers,

Henry Solotaroff-Webber

Frankie Hermanek

(ArtsEtc. Editors)