By DR. KAYLENE ARMSTRONG, Adviser
Once again, the Mass Communications students at Northwestern have started publishing the Northwestern News, allowing the entire campus to read what for most of them is basically homework.
Few other students have a possible audience of more than 2,000 students, faculty, staff and even community members looking over their “class assignments” for 13 weeks of the semester, sometimes praising the work but often criticizing it. We regularly review the student newspaper in Mass Communication classes, as one would expect. Like all professors, I want to help the students learn from what they do so they can do it better.
We also know the newspaper sometimes is held up in front of classes in other departments for ridicule. One professor even offered to let a student forgo the final if he got the newspaper to publish a scathing editorial about the Northwestern News.
That made the editors mad.
I reminded the editors that they shouldn’t take such criticisms to heart. And I pointed out that students in most other majors never put their class assignments out there for the entire campus to read. So I think that makes my students pretty darn brave, and I am proud of them for having the guts to do it every week.
They are also brave to stick it out in a national culture where newspapers are less valued by the public and have to contend with harsh attacks from the president of the United States right down to the average reader.
My fellow college newspaper advisers around the country regularly report about student newspapers being disbanded or tightly monitored by an administration that demands total control of the narrative being told about the university.
Luckily, the administration at NWOSU is supportive of the student press and understands the value of the First Amendment in maintaining a free society. President Janet Cunningham exhibited that support again this year with a welcome message that appears on the front page. We appreciate all the faculty, staff and administrators who make the time to help our students prepare their stories, so the Northwestern News can be the best we can make it.
Please help us make our 81st year another success.
“Like all professors, I want to help the students learn from what they do so they can do it better.”