As you picked up today’s print edition, I’m sure some of you noticed it fit into your hands a little easier than it has before.

I would love to say we at Technician did it so your paper is easier to hide in your textbooks during class, but that would be a lie. The truth is the newspaper business is changing, and to cut down on production costs, our printer has reduced our page width.

We’ll likely never get back the half-inch our paper lost, but, if this summer is any indication, even as our margins shrink, journalism has never been more important.

In mid-May when The News & Observer first reported there was fishy business going on between former Gov. Mike Easley, his wife and Board of Trustees chairman McQueen Campbell, it was because a watchdog journalist fought his way through the fabrications and red tape to find the truth.

The controversy’s connection to our university notwithstanding, the press’ pursuit of truth helped expose the injustices that had been hidden since Easley’s term expired –– and that’s exactly what we at Technician want to do. Sort of.

Technician is here for you, the reader. This shrinking page is your forum, your sounding board, your megaphone.

So when the lines at Carter-Finley are too long or you get hit in the head playing disc golf because some punks didn’t yell fore, or your degree curriculum is changing and you don’t know why–tell us about it, we’ll look into it.

Sometimes you’re just complaining (you should have ducked the Frisbee) but if it holds water, you can bet we’ll rush to find out why things aren’t the way they should be.

Beyond trying to diversify our content, we want to alter the ways you can access it this semester.

We’ll be experimenting with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to give you more opportunities to let us know what you want from your student newspaper.

We’ll continue working to get you the news as quickly and as accurately as possible through our online edition, because when you pull out your laptop during a lecture we want to be the site you visit to find out what’s up on campus.

But we can’t do it without you.

So e-mail us, call us and visit us. We’d love to know what you think – from when we use the wrong your/you’re to when we actually do something right (it could happen.)

And beyond that, we can definitely use your help up in the office, too.

Come on up to the third floor of Witherspoon and see how it works. Maybe you’re interested in journalism, maybe you just want to watch us struggle, but if nothing else you’ll get to watch how a bunch of crazy college kids push our procrastination and poise to the limit while juggling classes, debt and (sometimes) a social life.

So even though these pages are shrinking, don’t fret, we definitely have room for another staff member.

Send your thoughts on the newspaper industry to letters@technicianonline.com.