The Iowa State Daily Publication Board selected Tom Barton as the new fall and spring editor in chief and Kathryn Fiegen as the summer editor in chief Wednesday.

Barton, who in the past has reported on Cuffs, the Government of the Student Body, the Board of Regents and the Veishea riot, said he is very excited to accept the position.

“We’re going to work to make this paper the best it can be and a service all students can benefit from and one everyone at ISU can benefit from,” he said.

Amy Van Beek, chairwoman for the publication board, said Barton was a good choice because of his ability to balance life at the newspaper and manage stress. Van Beek also said his thoroughness and previous experience made him an attractive candidate.

Barton’s previous experience includes reporting for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Quad-City Times in Davenport, in addition to his experience at the Daily.

“His whole goals and plans were laid out there for us to see and it seemed more concrete,” she said.

Barton, junior in journalism and mass communication, said one main goal he wanted to work toward was broadening diversity coverage. He said he hoped to hold monthly meetings with local groups to learn about how to better cover issues affecting them.

In his proposal, Barton wrote that he wanted to improve the paper’s external relations and visual appeal.

“My goal for the Daily is to transform it into a newspaper that embraces and achieves excellence through spectacular coverage of breaking news, aggressive and in-depth news coverage, enterprising and useful content, stunning visuals and a better-utilized online edition,” he wrote.

Another change he said he planned on implementing was the use of surveys to better understand what issues students want covered.

“We just need to be really active and going out and getting feedback,” he said.

Internally, Barton’s major goal for the newsroom is restructuring how reporters are organized. In fall 2004, Barton proposed setting up reporting teams to create a network to support new reporters led by appointed senior reporters. The Daily now has five teams that cover specialty pages, politics, city of Ames, and Iowa State’s nine colleges. Barton said he hopes to continue that work and improve on it.

Barton will be working closely with Fiegen, junior in journalism and mass communication, who will be returning from a semester in Washington as an intern for the Scripps Howard Foundation news wire service. She has also had experience as a reporter for the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun in Mount Vernon; the Tipton Conservative in Tipton, and the ISU student magazine, ethos.

Fiegen said she saw the summer as an opportunity to begin experimenting with and implementing some of the policies for the fall.

“I see it as a great time to start shaping the Daily into what we want for the next year,” she said.

Fiegen said she feels the transition from summer to fall will not be hard.

“I think we’re going to be perfect complements to each other,” she said.