From the Editor: Welcome to Volume 18, meet The Runner team
Pictured left to right, top to bottom: Sukhmani Sandhu, Kristina Gardner, Raff Torres, Mariia Potiatynyk, Chelsea Lai, Nyamat Singh, Suneet Gill, and Sarah Nelson. Not pictured: Devaki Mathivanan and Diego Minor Martínez.
The fall semester is here and so are new beginnings, including the start of a new volume and welcoming some fresh new faces here at The Runner.
Our Instagram account, created last year after our old account was banned due to the Online News Act, has grown to engage and connect with Kwantlen Polytechnic University students and faculty, highlighting events on and around the school’s campuses and providing other important coverage.
Give us a follow at @runnermagg to stay up to date with all things KPU and beyond. We’re also on X, TikTok, and YouTube, under the handle @runnermag, where we share content about our stories.
Our TikTok account provides a detailed and closer look of The Runner team. From lip syncing trends and following a day in our lives to vital coverage on national, provincial, (and campus) elections, our TikTok videos are premium short-form content.
Our email newsletter, The Rundown, sent out bi-weekly, features top news, community, opinion, and pop culture stories from our latest issues. Visit the contact page on our website to subscribe and receive updates.
Pitch meetings for The Runner’s contributors, like the previous semester, will be held on Mondays at 1:00 pm over Zoom. We are eager to have more KPU students join our contributor base. As a student newspaper, we are a great outlet to hone your writing, communication, art, and photography skills. If you’re interested in writing or contributing art for The Runner, send an email to editor@runnermag.ca and we can get you started.
Over the past several months, The Runner’s staff have welcomed some new faces. In April, Kristina Gardner started as our news reporter. Gardner, a final-year journalism and psychology student at KPU, reports on timely news stories relevant to the school community and beyond. When she’s not out reporting for The Runner, Gardner, a self-described hockey addict, works as a volunteer journalist for the non-profit organization, Girls at the Games.
Our previous news reporter, Hope Lompe, who worked at The Runner for one year, has moved on to exploring the world and welcoming exciting new opportunities after graduating this summer.
We also hired Diego Minor Martínez as our new photo editor this summer. Minor Martínez, a photographer, writer, filmmaker, and Vancouver Film School alumnus, is a creative writing major at KPU. He takes quintessential pictures and edits photos for The Runner when he’s not out making films and winning awards.
Our previous photo editor, James Timmins, is pursuing a career in journalism as a newsletter editor and hopefully entertaining Black Press Media with his wicked sense of humour.
TikTok pundit Sukhmani Sandhu has become The Runner’s associate editor this month, after serving as our social media reporter. While TikTok has lost a legendary content creator in the making, The Runner’s editorial team has gained one.
Crossword wiz and Production Artist Raff Torres will be taking his ingenious graphic design skills and heading on to bigger opportunities after graduating this spring semester. The Runner’s procrastination page shall miss being laid out by future finance bro raffmadethis.ca.
While we look forward to welcoming new beginnings, we have familiar faces like Arts Editor Sarah Nelson, Web Manager Chelsea Lai, and Community Reporter Mariia Potiatynyk, who bring in valuable experience and skills to each of their roles.
Managing Editor Suneet Gill meticulously manages all things editorial before stories make it out to publication. Devaki Mathivanan, our operations manager, looks after The Runner’s staff and manages payroll, invoices, and human resource matters, among other duties.
The team at The Runner is far bigger than the paper itself. We are people with hobbies, of course, and one of them happens to be journalism.
And perhaps it is the narcissist in me, but it doesn’t take much convincing for someone to believe that we are an odd group of perfectly creative individuals and artists who love to nerd out about news, art, pop culture, and everything that matters every two weeks at productions. As one of the major sources of information for the student body, we get the opportunity to put our hearts into our work at The Runner.
There is a misconception that you need to be a journalist or experienced writer to work for us. But all you need to be is to be a storyteller, an artist, a gossip, and a clairvoyant at times.
If you decide to join us, I hope you find what I found at The Runner. And even if you don’t, please feel free to stop by Birch 106 on Mondays and Thursdays from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm to see what’s up.
