Senior Editors and Upper Management of CXLVII stand in front of Samuel Phillips Hall.
This paper marks the first issue of The Phillipian, vol. CXLVIII. Following The Phillipian’s board turnover on January 24, all Senior editors, managers, and members of Upper Management (UM) in vol. CXLVII have formally left the newsroom.
Louisa Carter ’25, former Editor-in-Chief, noted how The Phillipian has changed her perspective and granted her a new worldview. She expressed appreciation for every member of the paper, and shared gratitude for being a part of the PA community.
“[The Phillipian] was the best thing that could have happened to me…When you do The Phillipian, you see all the things other people are doing. It gives you just this level of awareness and gratitude for the community…It’s changed the way that I want to engage with the world in general, and the people who I want to surround myself with. I’m so immensely grateful for all the people in Upper Management, all the editors, associates, and so on, because when you’re in the newsroom with them, you just realize how incredible they all are,” said Carter.
Former Executive Editor Jacqueline Gordon ’25 also reflected on the positive impact that The Phillipian had on her, explaining how it’s been a consistent passion of hers throughout her time at Andover.
“There’s just something consuming about [The Phillipian] in a positive way. Once you fall in love with it it’s hard to fall out of love with it, especially as you move up into positions, start to get more knowledge, and get deeper into it. Over time I’ve grown more aware of how important The Phillipian is on campus, but also just in my life. It’s been a very big constant for me throughout all of my terms here and I’ve loved every moment of it,” said Gordon.
Looking towards the future, Bailey Xu ’26, a former News Associate and a current Managing Editor, shared initiatives that CXLVIII may pursue. She emphasized collaborating with other newspapers such as The Exonian at Phillips Academy Exeter, work The Phillipian has done in the past.
“We used to do joint surveys with The Exonian, so we would have stats from Exeter and Andover. I thought these are just really interesting things to have [and that] this is really interesting data to collect. Another aspect of it is that we used to cover events going on at other schools and I feel like that awareness and that connection has faltered. As high school newspapers who are all involved with student journalism, I think it’s pretty important that we stay aware of each other,” said Xu.
Another initiative to be rolled out soon is The Phillipian’s upcoming app. Former Executive Digital Editor Heyon Choi ’25 spoke on CXLVII’s work on the app over the fall term, specifically crediting former Managing Editor Tianyi Gu ’25 for spearheading the app’s creation.
“Tianyi put together an app for The Phillipian that will be launched very, very soon. I remember mentioning wanting to make a Phillipian app in my own Executive Digital Editor application, but I had no idea how to approach making an app whatsoever: And Tianyi did. He’s an amazing coder. He’s incredibly skilled and he was able to make that. I think that’s a really big accomplishment and a milestone for CXLVII,” said Choi.
Continuing with initiatives started by CXLVII, Gu commented on how the new Upper Management can continue The Phillipian’s efforts to improve relationships with faculty and administration.
“I think one of the areas that our board could have improved upon is being able to pursue certain articles and being able to work with the Head of School’s Office more. I think one of the areas that we struggled with…was getting interviews, for example, with [Raynard] Kington, our Head of School, and being able to get things from his perspective. We didn’t really have that much communication with him throughout. We only interviewed him once throughout the entire time…My hope for the next board is to be able to increase that in collaboration,” said Gu.
Micheal Kawooya ’26, former Commentary Associate and current Editor in Chief, noted the importance of The Phillipian’s duty to represent students beyond the Newsroom in a fair and unbiased way. Kawooya shared avenues towards achieving these goals.
“I’m thinking about ways we can make it easier for writers to join the paper. The way we currently do things asks a lot of writers to reach out themselves, [and] they have to kind of forge their own path. We could make it easier for writers to join, so we get more diverse stories and backgrounds,” said Kawooya.
Former Sports Associate and current Executive Editor Kate Rodgers ’26 elaborated on CXLVIII’s upcoming initiative to promote diversity and inclusion, particularly emphasizing this year’s Black History Month.
“Black History Month is coming up and… we’re hoping to do a lot in focusing on the history of Black History Month at Andover and going more into that. I was also thinking of maybe possibly working with the archives to do a little research on black students at andover in the past and kind of making our black history month content a little more intentional and thorough,” said Rodgers.
As a weekly facilitator and editor of The Phillipian’s editorial, Former Managing Editor Alice He ’25 explained how the editorial brings the views of the student body to the forefront of campus discussion, an aspect of The Phillipian where diversity is particularly important.
“It’s one of the very few places on campus and in The Phillipian also that is a place intended to voice the student body’s beliefs. It’s a representation of the student voice. It’s a way to communicate with the administration and faculty who read the newspaper what we want, what we’re concerned about, [and] what we notice. [We hold] this special space for students to share their abilities and their opinions and their experiences in a way that is entirely uncensored and truly representative of what we truly feel,” said He.
Valencia Zhang ’25, former Chief Financial Officer, pointed out another particular area of focus for the new board: general engagement with the paper that drives subscription sales. Noting that it will increase engagement and readership, in addition to being a key tenet of journalism, Zhang encouraged the new board to speak up about contentious issues.
“[There] was some decrease in engagement with the paper, from not necessarily the student body, but also from parents. Usually we sell subscriptions to parents but we found it to be a little more difficult this year to engage parents with the paper. This wasn’t directly to address this problem, but I think by writing more editorials that are risky, [for example] most recently we wrote an editorial directly towards the Head of School calling for an increase in engagement, we can really increase engagement with the paper, and encourage more people to read it,” said Zhang.
The business section is also looking to expand its modes of advertisement, a key component of The Phillipian’s revenue. Angela Zhao ’26, former Business Associate and current Chief Financial Officer, outlined her overarching strategy to broaden The Phillipian’s ad portfolio, highlighting a focus on digital advertisements in the app alongside using alumni connections.
“Something that we are working on right now is expanding advertisement opportunities, because if you know the business section well, the main revenue we run on is advertisements in The Phillipian. Most of those we have now are from local businesses downtown that you can go down to. You reach out to them, and then you sell an ad. What I wrote about [in my application] was expanding that to more digital opportunities. We have a new app coming up, [so] exploring if we can reach outside of local Andover, and just finding different forms, maybe communicating to alumni, but really establishing more [business] connections,” said Zhao.
In line with The Phillipian’s increased digital presence, former Graphics Editor and current Executive Digital Editor Abby Zhu ’26 spoke on her desire to add to The Phillipian’s digital content through video features on social media, expressing her hopes that it will increase student engagement with the paper.
“That’s a pretty big consensus with all of us on [Upper Management] right now, really utilizing Instagram and putting out a lot of content, not just Look of the Week or the What’s in Our Paper videos, but also just maybe doing sneak peeks of the editorial or other breaking news articles and doing more short form videos. We did the Zendaya [Coleman] and Robert Pattinson video, and that got a lot of engagement, obviously because we had the celebrities, but it was still really fun,” said Zhu.
Reflecting on his path to becoming a current Managing Editor, former Sports Associate Theo Wei ’26 offered some advice. He emphasized the importance of maintaining an open mindset and making the most of every opportunity.
“I think everything that you do, you shouldn’t take lightly…I feel like what you put into The Phillipian is what you’ll get out of it, and it’s really fulfilling, even before becoming UM, just making a bunch of connections and just learning more about journalism in and of itself is really great. And some other advice I would give [is] always be willing to learn and have an open mindset when it comes to journalism,” said Wei.
