The word “change” is an interesting term. When used in some sentences, “change” can signify something new or different that will occur in the near future. “The times, they are a changing,” is a good example of this.

Although our society often debates the pros and cons of change, one aspect of change remains certain — it is inevitable.

I tend to view change as a good idea. After all, nothing can become better unless you’re willing to change it. And let’s face it, few things in life are so perfect that they cannot benefit from change. This brings me to the point of this column, the change that has occurred in the newspaper.

I’m hoping if you’re already reading the opinion section you’ve noticed the changes in the Daily. Last week, a few of us got together to redesign this paper. We thought it was time for a change. According to a journalism professor, it’s been about 10 years since the Daily has undergone such a “radical” transformation.

So for hours and hours, we poured over books with different fonts, we looked at the best designed college newspapers in the country and we looked at last semester’s version of the Daily with a critical eye.

The result of our work is what you see before you. No, it’s not perfect, but we think it’s better. In fact, we like the new Daily a lot.

We know change can be very difficult for many people. We know some of you may not like the new Daily, at least not yet. Keep reading though, and I’ll explain the new features and why we added them.

Let’s start at the beginning and work our way in.

The flag — The flag is the section of the newspaper at the very top of page one that displays the name of the paper. New changes in our flag include more color, new fonts and less graphics for weather and previews to the inside. We changed the flag because we wanted to. There’s really no benefit to you, but at least it looks better.

The chimney — A chimney in newspapers is the full-length column at the left-hand side of the page which contains brief snippets of information and stories, the weather, previews for the rest of the paper, and basically anything we want to put in it. Its purpose is completely for your benefit.

We’ve taken this idea a step further than most papers and added a chimney to the opinion, arts and entertainment, and sports sections as well. Look for interesting briefs, sports scores, photo surveys — all kinds of interesting things.

The layout — We’ll be using more graphics, cartoons and illustrations now to accompany our stories. We created a new position, design editor, who will concentrate on making the Daily more visually attractive.

Quick Es — This is a new feature and for those of you familiar with The Des Moines Register, think of the Quick E section of the Daily as the electronic mail version of “Your 2 cents Worth.”

This section allows you to anonymously express yourself and opinions in a one sentence e-mail. Ask questions, make complaints, point out something of interest, do anything you want. The point is, it’s just one more way for you to voice your opinions in your student newspaper.

The best Quick E of the day will be printed on the front page. The rest will show up in the chimney on the Opinion page.

The last page — Stories that do not fit on the front page will now continue on the last page of the paper, instead of going to page two. This way, when you’re in class and you really want to find out what happened with a front page story, you don’t have to make a lot of noise and open up the paper. You just have to turn it over. I think the professor’s will really like this change.

Page two — This page now has a chimney which will tell you tomorrow’s weather and there will be short, interesting stories in the column as well. For instance, today we have a brief about a sheriff who dresses his prisoners in pink underwear.

Finally, we’ve made ourselves more accessible to you by including every editor’s office phone number on page two. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, whatever, give us a call.

I guess that’s about it. We’ll be tweaking and adjusting things for a few more weeks. So bear with us and let us know what you think about the new and improved Daily.

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Keesia Wirt is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Panora. She is the editor in chief of the Daily.