When I finished eighth grade, I got a piece of advice from our librarian: Find a meeting place for you and your friends because its easy to spend your four years in high school wandering about, looking for the people you care for most.

My friends and I picked a palm tree on the west side of the quad where we met every school day for four years. Yes, I grew up in California.

For the past four years, The Badger Herald has been my palm tree, and I expect this is a sentiment that resonates throughout the newsroom. The Herald is a meeting place; an intersection of great minds, talent, passion and dedicated people.

In January, I will charge our team with the same directive I set in August: be bold, be innovative and make it matter.

We will continue having our two products, online at badgerherald.com and in print on Mondays and Thursdays. Our print edition will include a revamped features page which will be the home for our longer form cover stories. Online we look to keep our pages clean and fresh with up-to-date stories from news, sports, artsetc. and opinion. We will continue our partnership with Madison Misnomer and print our favorite Shoutouts on Thursdays.

The Badger Herald will forever be an experiment, a spirit we will work hard to uphold in 2015. We are always looking for new ways to expand our platform and our reach. Next semester, we will experiment with video, blogging, audio and design with a new-found fervor.

Under our palm tree, we will have Polo Rocha as Managing Editor and Katie Caron as Digital Managing Editor in a role reversal that will bring a fresh but seasoned perspective to our print and online products.

In the few times I have visited my high school since graduating, I always look for the kids under the palm tree. The group changes every year – sometimes it’s the drama kids, sometimes the newspaper kids and other times it’s the lax bros. They all bring a new spirit and different dynamic to the meeting place I once felt ownership over.

So in our aim to make our product fresh and innovative, I call upon everyone on campus to join us, whether as a contributor to our pages or as a reader. Share your perspective on an established platform and make The Badger Herald your meeting place.

Tara Golshan ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and international studies with a certificate in French.