The Anchor to move digital publications to Yik Yak

*This article is part of The Ranchor, The Anchor’s biannual satire edition.*

Beginning next month, Hope College’s Anchor will move its digital publications to the popular app, Yik Yak. The move comes after a rise in the popularity of the anonymous discussion thread app and a decline in the number of email subscribers to the Anchor. 

“We thought a long time about this decision,” said co-editor-in-chief of the Anchor, Reed Allaboutit. “In the long run, it just makes sense. People are consuming short bursts of content and we want to stay relevant.” 

The Anchor currently publishes online three times a week and sends out a weekly newsletter on Wednesdays. The Yik Yak model will look a little different. 

“We’re actually going to be working with ‘The Reporter’,” Allaboutit explained. “They are an established presence on Yik Yak and so we’re just going to send our headlines to them to blast to the campus community.” 

The new plan will not include links to full articles and will just feature headlines. “Only writing headlines is going to save our writers lots of time,” said Allaboutit. “Also, who even reads whole articles anymore, anyway?” 

Student reaction to this news has been mixed, but mostly positive. 

“Oh, yeah, I love Yik Yak,” said Brandon Van der VanHosen (’26). “I read it every morning when I drink my Red Bull. It’s like a… you know… a…oh, a newspaper. But not boring.”

When told about the Anchor’s plan to move to Yik Yak, Van der VanHosen said, “Oh, dope. I didn’t know Hope had a newspaper. That’s dope, though.”

Other students had some concerns. 

Junior Maddie Grace DeVanBaakker said, “I just hope they keep printing it. I like to use it to make collages to submit to Opus. I don’t actually read it, but it’s great for my creative process.” 

Allaboutit confirmed plans to continue printing the Anchor, but “it’ll mostly be pictures.” He explained, “I mentioned earlier that we want to stay relevant. People are getting their news in short form and visual mediums, so this is just our way of keeping up.” 

Look out for the Anchor, hitting your Yik Yak feed, beginning next month!