Letter from the Editor

Dear Reader,

As 80-degree weather and river days return, Deerfield springs back to life from a dreary winter. The Scroll room is likewise bustling with energy; our writers and editors are working frantically to finish our April issue. It is the last issue in Volume C. The first hundred years are done.

Let me address the elephant in the room. You are not reading this article in printed media. In an increasingly online world, we in the Scroll room also felt the pressure to move toward expanding new platforms to stay connected with today’s readers. Our website, podcasts, Youtube channel, and Instagram account also serve this function. We dedicate ourselves to being a newspaper that evolves with time.

You might ask: why go online when Deerfield preaches face-to-face connections? The Academy emphasizes tradition in every sense of the word, so why change to an option that breaks with our values? The answer, I would argue, is that our website serves to complete the full Scroll experience, instead of taking away from any aspect. We will still have print issues once a month. Publishing online every two weeks allows us to expand the range of our articles. Every print issue requires days to trim down words to fit the page and layout in a computer software, and we are often limited in terms of article length and the number of articles that make up each issue. Associate Editors spend nights meticulously editing articles to make them more concise. Although we believe in our editors’ ability to maintain journalistic integrity, some information will inevitably be lost through this process. We hope to preserve the original voice of our student journalism through online issues.

Another rather unfortunate reason, I think, that drove this decision is the decline in print journalism. In 2025, The New York Times gained 1.4 million online subscribers but continued the trend from previous years to lose its print readers. Other mainstream news sources reported similar trends. Audiences are more accustomed to consuming timely information online—we are working toward publishing rapid response articles that deliver news of campus events within a few days of them taking place. To serve shifting reader interest, we chose to follow other newspapers’ footsteps by more consistently publishing online, but with a Deerfield touch in the preservation of our journalistic standards, along with the continuance of our monthly paper issues. We seek to embody the Academy’s dedication to tradition while keeping up to date with trends beyond the bubble.

I am quite optimistic about where the Scroll is going, despite the uncertainties the journalism industry faces. I think our online, prompt coverage of campus news will better connect families, alumni, and prospective students with Deerfield. The website is an accessible platform for anyone who wants a glance of campus life. Meanwhile, we also have new ways to connect students on campus. Recently, I have been discussing the idea of adding word games onto our website with Yong, one of our head website editors, and we agreed that these games could engage faculties and students alike. Be sure to visit the website and check out our Crossword. Through the website, the Scroll could function as more than just a communications piece with the external world. It also brings our community closer together, hence our original intentions as a school newspaper. 

I also ask you, the readers, to take a leap of faith. We have never done an issue completely online before, and we are still figuring out things as we go down this path. I ask you to trust us and continue reading, for readership motivates us to write. Please visit our website more and spread the word to your friends or family. Starting from this issue, we want to cultivate an online community of engaged readers. And that begins with you, reading. 

Yours in truth,

Andrew Li