The Waltonian celebrates 75 years in publication this year. The paper has changed a lot over that course of time: names, from exclusively print to multimedia and, of course, leadership and staff over the years. Through all the change, however, The Waltonian has remained the journalistic student voice on campus.
Alumni of The Waltonian have noticed the many changes to the Waltonian over the years, especially the shift to include more digital media. Chelsea Post worked on the Waltonian from 2007 to 2011. She remembers in her sophomore year when The Waltonian launched “the bare bones” of The Waltonian website.
Post also remembers “many, many late nights” in the Waltonian office. Multiple alumni who worked on The Waltonian in the 2010s remember the old office in Walton, where they worked communally, doing layout or planning the next issue in story-idea meetings.
Andrew Whitehead, who served as copy editor from 2013 to 2014, recalls working “Sunday night before the paper would come out on Tuesday, sitting up in Walton.” Katherine Apostolacus, copy editor from 2014 to 2016, similarly recalls “lots of late nights.” Despite the long hours, she fondly remembers how the team “worked together really well – partly because we’re all friends.”
A strong sense of community has remained a defining part of the Waltonian for 75 years. Many other alumni also fondly remembered the people they worked with at The Waltonian, even giving shoutouts to specific members of their teams. Ruby Baker, staff writer and then copy editor in 2018, said that one of their major takeaways from their time at The Waltonian is “community that has always existed.”
Alumni also recall less positive elements, like the limited resources to which The Waltonian had access. Abigail Brooke, who worked on the Waltonian from 2018 to 2020, recalled that “for a long time,” when writers needed a picture for their article, “we were just taking iPhone photos or borrowing from that one friend who had a camera. Eastern was much smaller back then,” she said, and “not as much time or resources” was dedicated to the paper.
Nicole Markert, who graduated in 2020 and worked on The Waltonian all four years, said that “The Waltonian definitely expanded a lot and is better cared for now. Eastern used to be in a pretty bad spot.” Back in 2017 and 2018, the Waltonian had limited resources: “only one computer that had one InDesign license; we had to share a lot of resources.” Now, however, Markert said they “feel like The Waltonian is flourishing.”
Similarly, Marin Dremock, who worked on The Waltonian from 2020-2024, said that she saw the budget increase over her time at The Waltonian. This, she said, meant that there was “more incentive to make [the paper] more of a thing.” She specifically mentioned the “online format growth [as] really cool to see.” She said that online “really is where journalism is right now” and that she is “really proud” of The Waltonian for the strides it has made.
Many other alumni, like Baker, Market and Whitehead, also recognized the switch to more online journalism and applauded these changes.
Other major changes to the paper came from changes in leadership. Kelsey Fiander-Carr, who worked on The Waltonian from 2016 to 2020 and was editor-in-chief for three of those years, noted some of the changes she instituted as editor-in-chief. “Every year the editor-in-chief has a little something new they bring to the table,” said Fiander-Carr. The “newspaper feels like that person” who is in charge, she said.
Fiander-Carr tried to bring “consistency with layout and structure” during her time in leadership. Other leaders brought different things to the table. Dremock, who worked on The Waltonian from 2020-2024, said that she kept the status quo as the editor-in-chief, but her successor “had this huge vision to rework the aesthetics of The Waltonian to make it look more like a newspaper.”
Some things have stayed the same, though. The paper has always sought to be a voice for the student body on campus. Baker said that “one of the best things about Waltonian… that hasn’t changed” is that The Waltonian has been a “student-run paper that really hones in on not just one type of student.”
Post similarly said that while she was editor-in-chief of the Waltonian, “we did a lot more community-focused articles.” The Waltonian focused on stories that applied to students and that students cared about. As Baker said, the things that “people [at Eastern] were talking about, The Waltonian was also talking about them.”
Apostolacus also mentioned that “as an editorial and writing team, we were really interested in paying attention to things going on on campus.” The team worked hard to report on the important stories, and to have “full transparency and be as free as we possibly could be and to have a journalistic voice. I’m very proud of our team for doing that,” she said.
This journalistic voice can mirror and change the conversations on campus. Market said that, when she worked at the Waltonian, the writers sometimes brought things – on campus and in the wider world – to students’ attention “that people didn’t realize were happening until we started talking about it in the paper,” which proved the “significance of what student journalism can do.”
In this way, the paper can demonstrate not only what was happening on campus over the years, but what was on students’ minds over the past 75 years at Eastern. Whitehead said The Waltonian, especially the opinions section, is “a time capsule, not just of society at large,” but specifically of Eastern’s community. Apostolacus echoed this sentiment, saying, “If you want to get a sense for what campus was like, what conversations were dominating the campus around that time, look at the [Opinion] articles.”
Over the years, The Waltonian has changed shape and content, but the paper has remained the student voice of Eastern University. The Waltonian has legitimately functioned as a journalistic entity – even when, maybe, it did not quite look the part, or when it was under-resourced, or undergoing change. The Waltonian tells the story of Eastern’s history.
