As the spring semester comes into full swing, The Drew Acorn wanted to take a moment to highlight our Editor-In-Chief, Nicole Sydor (‘25). Sydor is a sophomore majoring in English and French and minoring in psychology and education.
Sydor first experienced the student-paper-life and its associated responsibilities in middle school, where she and her friends ran the entirety of their school’s paper. In high school, she was initially a writer for their school’s paper, before becoming a section editor during her senior year. Sydor immediately joined The Acorn when she arrived at Drew in 2021. She served as the Opinions Editor up until last year, when she officially became The Acorn’s Editor-In-Chief.
Due to her essential role in operating our illustrious paper, we decided to interview Sydor about her experiences and responsibilities of being our chief editor.
What made you want to become the Editor-in-Chief?
“I knew there was more potential for The Acorn. There was a lot of room for growth, and I was really excited to try and help make that change. So I thought that if I was Editor-in-Chief, it would be the best chance I had at making a difference.”
What have your responsibilities been so far as the Editor-in-Chief?
“I mainly deal with administration. I’m the ‘in-between person’ between the paper, the writers, the editors, our advisors, the printers and any other campus organizations that we want to get involved with. Because of COVID, the Editor-in-Chief position absorbed a lot of responsibilities, so right now I also edit all the articles as a final read through and do a lot of additional copy editing and webmaster posting things. But a lot has changed, such that I don’t have to do all that [now] because we have such a great team! So, for example, I don’t have to worry as much about posting online since we have amazing webmasters. I still send out the newsletter and am still the spokesperson for the paper and things like that, but it’s significantly more manageable [than last year] because of the team we have!”
What’s the hardest part about being the Editor-in-Chief?
“Probably the administrative aspect? Like making sure we have what we need. Everyone inside the paper is really eager to make it wonderful, but there’s a chain of command that I go through. I first work with our advisor [Dean Brisson], who is absolutely fabulous! Then our advisor has to ask external parties to do the things we need [and] then ask us to do certain things based on their responses. And when that’s done, we have to go back to the external parties to see if everything is in order. It can get really complicated and really convoluted, and [it] often prevents us from doing our jobs or getting what we need. That’s not just frustrating for me; it’s frustrating for everyone involved.”
What have you enjoyed the most about being Editor-In-Chief?
“Being with everybody! We have a really great community this year; everyone wants to be there, and it’s really exciting to see people want to participate instead of, you know, just doing it to do it. They genuinely care, and they really want to make it something special. Whether it be for a resume or to make friends, I have had people come up to me and say, ‘I’m so excited for the SKED meeting!’ or ‘I’m excited to write this article!’ They genuinely want to be a part of the paper, and that’s really fun!”
What are you most looking forward to? Do you have any plans for The Acorn in the future?
“I’m really excited to submit to the American Press Association, so we can compete to get some awards and accolades. We used to do that in the 1980s and 90’s, and a bit in the early 2000s. I also really want to do Acorn merch, but we’ll see where that goes.”
Anything else you want to plug, say or announce?
“Just thank you to everyone who works at The Acorn and [to] all our lovely readers!”
Before this article ends, we’d like to give a massive thank you to Sydor for her incredible work as our Editor-in-Chief! Running an entire newspaper is no small task; with all the coordination with administration, organization of articles and distribution of the paper, it’s easy for anyone to break under the pressure. But Sydor has stepped up to the challenge with unwavering confidence, and The Drew Acorn has never looked better! We’re proud to have her as our chief, and we are endlessly thankful for all that she does!
Teddy Droar is a junior majoring in psychology.
