On March 26, The OU Daily publications board selected Blake Douglas to serve as The Daily’s editor-in-chief for the fall 2021 and spring 2022 semesters.
Douglas, a journalism junior, has worked for The Daily in multiple capacities on the news desk since fall 2018 and currently serves as The Daily’s news managing editor. He said he is most looking forward to campus getting “closer to normal” after a year in the pandemic, which in turn will bring the newsroom closer to normal.
“(We’ll be) able to have the publication be more actively involved in the community, just because the community itself will be more active and there’s going to be more going on,” Douglas said. “I’m really looking forward to just serving as that connection between the community and The Daily, hopefully interacting a lot with the people who read us… making it a bit more clear what we do and how we do it, and building trust in that way with that transparency.”
Douglas said he hopes to reinvest in podcast efforts at The Daily and build a better relationship with the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
“(I will be) making sure The Daily, or at least making an effort to ensure that The Daily actually reflects the community that we're serving,” Douglas said. “I think that's a media problem as a whole, and that's something that I know that we're cognizant of. I know that we've covered the campus extremely well with competency, but we do need more people in the newsroom who will help us do that and give us more perspective, because there are things that we miss. We can't be everywhere if we don't have people from different corners of campus.”
Becoming editor-in chief has been a goal for Douglas since he first joined The Daily, and he hopes to use the experiences he’s had from news reporter to news managing editor to continue the work his predecessors have done.
“It really seemed like the next logical thing for me,” Douglas said. “It’s kind of a combination of a personal goal I’ve always had, and then wanting to eventually step into that spot and make the people who came before me proud, carry on all the great things that I've learned from them and hopefully continue to build the publication like they had done before.”
