The Trend serves as USAO’s student produced newspaper, providing coverage in news, sports, opinions, features, visual arts, and multimedia formats.
In the past few months, The Trend has been in a transitioning and revamping stage. The organization said goodbye to former Editor-in-Chief Emily Loughridge at the end of October 2024 and welcomed Gary Jackson as their new Editor-in-Chief at the beginning of November. Along with Jackson taking over, four new editor positions were added to the editorial staff, and the managing editor position was removed.
- Cassie Srock: News Editor
- Matthew Yokum: Sports Editor
- Thomas Buchanan: Entertainment Editor
- Whitley Brown: Feature Editor
“I wanted to make The Trend’s structure how I saw it would best function. Adding four more editing positions not only leveled out the weight of the work for one editor into five editors, but it gives opportunities, the spotlight, and experience to the people that are in the editor positions. Having more help is never a bad thing,” said Jackson.
Even with all these changes, The Trend is still the newspaper it was when it was established in 1919. It may not be a hard copy newspaper anymore, but The Trend still holds its core values and strives to educate, connect, and inspire.
The Trend aspires to educate the student body and the town of Chickasha with quality journalism, connect the student body with each other as well as the local community and outside world, and inspire the students, faculty, and staff of USAO to engage in their community.
Another important part to The Trend’s identity is Opal, who is the owl mascot designed by former Editor-in-Chief Daniel Buster in 2022. The name was voted on by the student body and they picked the name Opal, which was inspired by the very first Editor-in-Chief of The Trend, Opal Dolan.
The design of Opal was also inspired by the Roman Goddess Minerva, USAO’s mascot. Minerva is referred to as an owl symbol because she is the goddess of wisdom, war, art, schools, justice, and commerce.
For the entire year of 2024, The Trend published 184 works, ranging from articles to illustrations to projects.
The Trend wrote more sports articles than any other category with 76 sports articles. The news category took second place with 54 articles.
The most viewed article The Trend produced last year was an opinion piece written by Loughridge as she did a concert review over AJR’s “Maybe Man” tour.
The Trend is active on social media, providing links and information to all content published on the website. This is the primary way they use to push out information about the articles they publish. The Trend is active on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
For those who are interested in writing, illustrating, or photography; they can contact The Trend through social media or by email at trend@usao.edu. The Trend meets every Monday at 5 p.m. in the Music Pocket located in Nash Library.
Cassie Srock is a second-year communication major at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
