One hundred fifty issues. Fourteen thousand copies a day. Five days a week. Twenty editors, about 50 reporters and photographers. Two offices. One paper.

This is a year of the Iowa State Daily in numbers. They’re easy to understand, easy to analyze.

But what the numbers don’t reflect is the kind of year the people behind them experienced. They don’t reflect the year the Daily has had – a year of change.

Change creates a ripple effect in anything it touches. One big change means lots of smaller things must change too. Sometimes this is easy to do; other times it is more difficult.

The Daily has seen an incredible amount of change this year.

It has been an inside-out kind of change, from our public perception to the very nuts and bolts of how we put the pages together.

We created and implemented a universal copy desk this year, adding a whole new dimension to the Daily newsroom, staff and paper product. A copy desk is a standard part of almost any newsroom. It is where the paper comes together, where the wordsmiths meet the designers and the stories meet the pages.

The copy desk has given Daily staff members the opportunity to learn about a part of the newsroom that wasn’t available before. Previously only the section editors, managing editor and editor in chief were in charge of the pages. While this meant the most experienced people were doing the work, it also meant that very few people knew how to design pages, write headlines and edit stories for length.

These may not seem like very hard things to do, but when five people are trying to learn how to do them for the first time all at once, on the job, it becomes a lot more difficult. The progress the paper has made with the copy desk shows in its pages from the beginning of the year through today. It is now an established part of the newsroom and an area people are eager to explore.

This has affected the look of the Daily. After the redesign a year before, the Daily’s copy editors and design editor took the look of the paper one step further, adding new elements to give the pages a cleaner, more guided look.

It is a look that will continue to develop and change every year as new editors see new opportunities and explore new ideas on the paper’s pages.

All of this change is meant to highlight the content, another aspect that will continue to improve with time, effort and change. The Daily has taken several different approaches to its content this year, running longer, in-depth stories, trying new kinds of graphic elements and reaching new levels of achievement in its photos.

We have broken stories other state papers scrambled to catch, something seldom done in previous years.

We have changed the way we view the opinion pages, looking for a wider variety of columnists, from conservative to liberal to agriculturally focused.

We have changed the way we editorialize, focusing more on local issues that impact our readers and taking stronger stances on those issues.

These factors have led to a change in the way we see ourselves – not just as kids playing on computers, but journalists providing an important service to the ISU community.

Yes, we are a place to learn – just as every job is – but we are also a very real newspaper with a very real, very large community.

We have seen changes in our staff.

We have lost co-workers, and experienced the heartache that comes with losing friends. We have gained co-workers, and learned to appreciate the unique personalities and contributions each person adds to the newsroom and the paper.

And we have done a great job. When I think about the things that have happened this year, with all its trials and victories, I am so proud of the work we have accomplished.

We have covered one of the largest tragedies of our time. We have served as a watchdog for the student body. We have introduced new ideas and opinions. We have done it every day, sacrificing grades, relationships and personal health.

It’s hard to describe the thrill I felt this year every time I walked into the library or Memorial Union and saw all the copies of the Daily being read. To know that people are looking at our work and taking time to read it is a wonderful, rather humbling, feeling.

Thank you for your letters to the editor. Thank you for your story ideas. Thank you for your criticisms and your compliments. Thank you for the opportunity.

Andrea Hauser is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Edgewood. She is the editor in chief of the Daily.