Clarification: The Shield previously stated the Henderson Gleaner closed. We corrected the story to say Audubon Printers, which operated at the Henderson Gleaner, closed in May.

College campuses and college media changed in 2020. The Shield is no exception. We announced in March we would discontinue the print edition for the spring semester because of COVID-19. We are now informing the community we will permanently suspend the printing of the weekly print edition and move to themed monthly editions.

We made this decision for the safety of our staff and to be able to follow social distancing guidelines as much as possible. We also made this decision because our printer, the Audubon Printers, closed in May.

These monthly editions will be on our newsstands every month and contain special content. We will have a weekly e-newsletter sent right to your email and continue to post stories daily on usishield.com. 

In order to give you the best content possible, we have also restructured how The Shield will work. The new leadership team consists of people and positions designed for this new time to ensure our new platform is the best it can be. The most noticeable change is the features, opinions and review sections will be combined into one section titled lifestyle.

The Shield has been around for over 50 years and has never experienced anything like COVID-19 and the impact it has had on our campus and community. This is the first time in The Shield’s history we’ve had to make decisions like this. There will be many other “firsts” for us in the time of COVID-19. We will do our best to navigate through it and provide the community with the information they need.

Our mission is to give the USI community information about what is happening on campus and providing you with what you need to know. We will continue to be a voice for those on our campus and work our best to make sure these voices are heard. Any news tips or comments can be sent to [email protected]

We understand this is a new and scary time for everyone. We’ve heard others’ fear the university will close within a moment’s notice. We’ve heard people are excited to be back on campus and others are scared because of this virus. We share these emotions with the community. Every day, we work to become more flexible in response to the virus and we will continue to work for you.

To sign up for our new newsletter, go to usishield.com, enter your email address and click subscribe.