dbo:abstract
- The Flat Hat is the official student newspaper at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. It prints Tuesdays during the College's academic year. It began printing twice-weekly in 2007; since its inception in 1911, The Flat Hat had printed weekly. It returned to weekly printing in 2015. In fall 2020, The Flat Hat began printing biweekly due to restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The Flat Hat staff operates out of its office in William and Mary's Sadler Center. The newspaper is printed as a broadsheet. During the early 1990s, The Flat Hat was printed with a colored front page and a separate colored variety section. Today, The Flat Hat's front page and back page are generally printed in color while the inside pages are printed in black and white. The newspaper currently supports five sections: news, sports, opinions, variety and digital media. The news section covers local and national news, focusing on events at the College. The sports section covers all William and Mary varsity athletics and profiles teams and individual players. The opinions section publishes regular op-eds and staff editorials, and prints student letters to the editor. The variety section features regular columns, including "Behind Closed Doors" (the sex column) and "Confusion Corner" (an opinion column), "Penne For Your Thoughts" (a cooking column) and "Sharps and Flats" (a music review column) along with human interest stories. The digital media section produces multimedia content in the form of videos, podcasts, graphics and photos as well as maintains the newspaper's social media presence. In October 2007, The Flat Hat won a Pacemaker award for excellence in the category of non-daily newspaper at a four-year university. The Pacemaker is an honor in collegiate journalism, and is awarded by the Associated Collegiate Press and the Newspaper Association of America Foundation. In 2017, The Flat Hat was recognized with a "mark of excellence" award from the Society of Professional Journalists for in-depth reporting. (en)