When the hand of the clock is inching toward midnight as the newspaper nears its nightly deadline, I look at a photo that hangs on the wall near my desk. It was mounted in its tarnished wood frame long before I was around. Near the bottom, there’s a small piece of paper with 16 names plunked out on a typewriter. The faces that belong to those names are always watching over us as we put out the newspaper every day – just like they once did.

It’s The Daily Utah Chronicle staff of 1896. I envy that year’s staff especially, because how’s this for a newsy headline: “Utah joins the union as a state”. And believe it or not, these people – seven women, nine men (a more equal gender distribution than we have on this year’s editorial board) – comprised the sixth staff to fill these pages. They were old hands at this. Some of them probably didn’t even remember when the newspaper started in 1890.

Way before us, someone was doing our job when Utah was still a territory. Someone was doing our job when most people got around by horse-drawn carriages. Someone was doing our job when Oscar Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray. Someone was doing our job when Vincent van Gogh died.

That’s how long having an independent news source has mattered to our students, and that’s why I have no doubts that we’re going to be around for at least another 123 years.

Our responsibility as journalists doesn’t end when purse strings are tightened or when newsroom jobs are cut. There is always news out there to report on and we will never stop looking for it. As your independent student voice, we are as committed as ever to bringing that news to you in a way that is palatable, informative and most of all, honest. Just look at Kevin Tao’s reporting on A4 of ASUU’s big plans for this year, or Chad Mobley’s predictions on D1 for our football team’s upcoming season. One of those people in that photo, decked out in their seersucker suit or Victorian lace dress was once out there on campus, pen and paper in hand, scribbling furiously to get it all down, just as Kevin and Chad did. That never changes.

However, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t open to new methods to create high-quality student journalism. Over the course of the year, we’ll be rolling out some innovative projects that will change the way that U students receive their campus news. Keep your eyes peeled for our iPhone app, our interactive eBooks and most of all, a new Friday magazine, debuting to readers for the first time on Aug. 29. If brevity is the key to being published, as the old journalism adage goes, then open-mindedness is the key to relevancy.

I hope that if those 16 staffers were around to see us today, they wouldn’t be horrified by the lack of typewriters and light tables, but encouraged by the way that we love our newspaper just as much as they did. I hope that they’ve realized by now, as they watch over us every night that we spend in this newsroom, that we are undyingly committed to sticking around as “your only source for campus news” for another 123 years.

And I hope that in 2136, another editor will be sitting in this office, sweaty-palmed and near their deadline, and will look up to a photo of our staff. I hope that they will look past our archaic skinny jeans and feel the same awe when they realize that they are a part of something bigger than themselves – something that has mattered for so long. After all, the more things change, the more they stay the same.