Dear reader,

It’s been exactly one year since we published our first article in the Midpeninsula Post, and what a year it’s been.

Going from that lone article on our website and every source asking “You work for who?” over the phone, to having a real, growing audience with community (and even congressional!) recognition has made for an eventful 12 months. 

It’s taken a lot of hard work — and a fair share of luck, no doubt — to get here.

We’ve had no shortage of frustration, mistakes, tears and down days this past year. Not every story we publish is perfect; not every newsworthy happening has been covered; not every new initiative has been successful; and we certainly haven’t met our own expectations every day.

But what we can proudly say is that we’ve stuck true to our mission every day since we’ve founded: to build a small, dedicated team striving to deliver reliable local journalism to high schoolers — to make a real difference in our community.

We couldn’t be more proud of the work we’ve put into the Post, and while it’s impossible for us to know what’s in store for us in this next year, we can all confidently say that there’s no other group of teammates that we’d rather be in this with.

The same day we published our first article, we also wrote a letter to our readers explaining our mission statement. The end of it reads:

“We know that there are hurdles we’ll face from here, but we also know that anything worth doing takes a whole lot of dedication in the face of uncertainty. So if you’re reading this, we appreciate it — it means we’re one step closer to realizing our vision.”

We think all of that still holds true.

Tomoki Chien, editor-in-chief
Naina Srivastava, news editor
Melody Xu, community editor
Arya Nasikkar, photo editor
Dana Huch, copy editor
Gil Rubinstein, business manager
Natalie Arbatman, reporter
Carly Heltzel, reporter
Siddhant Kanwar, reporter
Avni Rajagopal, reporter
Samuel Stein, reporter
Mia Bassett, photographer
Emily Yao, photographer
Allison Huang, graphic artist