Just what is the role of a school newspaper anyway?

The most obvious answer stems from the description–school newspaper. A device used to teach student journalists how to be reporters and writers. A place where they can put the skills they have learned to use. You could answer that way and you wouldn’t be wrong, but you also wouldn’t be totally correct.

With great power comes great responsibility, and although I risk sounding like a clip from the Spiderman franchise I have to do it, because it’s true. Putting words and photos to paper, and distributing that paper carries a measure of power and responsibility; the responsibility to serve.

And that service should be dedicated to one group only–the audience. That audience includes the entire campus community, the students, the faculty and the staff. One of the basic tenets of journalism is to be willing to do the dirty work. We do the digging, the interviews and the investigating that the everyday member of the campus community can’t do. That’s what we learn and it’s why we go to class. The reporter’s job is to ask the questions necessary to inform the campus of what is going on around them, of what they should know.

Unfortunately the Hornet missed the boat during the last ASI election.

More emphasis needed to be placed on who the candidates were, what they planned on doing and where they stood on the issues facing students today. I know a great deal of time and effort was put in by the editorial staff to make what they felt was they best choice for the paper’s candidate endorsements, but that’s kind of backwards.

The role of a school newspaper is not to think for the student electorate, but to do the voter’s homework instead. Yes there was coverage, but it was far from comprehensive. Most of the coverage centered around the election process and a candidate’s struggle to get on the ballot. Important stories yes, but hardly enough when so much money is on the line.

The one measure that was covered substantially revolved around the health center. It was fairly reported and well-covered–the way every candidate and ballot measure should have been. A quick survey of students on campus drove the point home for me. Very few of the students I spoke with after the election voted, but most of them said they read The State Hornet every week. Not surprisingly the most common response was “I didn’t vote because I didn’t know anything about the candidates.”

Now I’m no apologist, I believe that students are some of the laziest when it comes to their civic duties. John Kerry learned that the hard way last November. But a newspaper has to take the high road and make sure it does its part, so as not to be labeled complicit in that laziness.

This isn’t about my personal disdain for formal endorsements either. That is something that will probably not change in my time. But as a former editor, I understand the limited resources available to a publication like the Hornet, and that time would have been better spent doing in-depth profiles and solidly reporting on all of the issues on the ballot.

During an election reporters and editors hear and see a lot, and have a much better grasp of the entire situation. This can also lead to apathy, because it all seems so boring and repetitive. It is important to remember that readers aren’t privy to all of that information–until the story is written.