By DR. KAYLENE ARMSTRONG
Adviser
For the 85th year, students are once again publishing the Northwestern News. Today is Issue 1.
This will be a rebuilding year for the newspaper, a phenomenon well-known to coaches when most of their core players graduate or leave. That happened at the Northwestern News this spring. We’ve begun the fall semester with only two carry-overs from last year: ad manager Derrick Galindo and circulation manager Collin Zink.
All the other faces will be new. We are still putting together our team of editors, and next week we will introduce you to all of them. A few have been through many of the mass communications classes and are ready to become editors. However, some have never even written for a newspaper yet are willing to give it a shot as an editor. I admire that grit and willingness to face what can be a daunting challenge.
We thank you readers in advance for your support as we struggle to get up to speed. Our entire major is in a rebuilding cycle right now, so we only have a few students writing for us this semester. If anyone around campus in any other major would like to write, please contact me (kdarmstrong@nwosu.edu), and I’ll get you in touch with the right editor.
If you have story ideas, please pass them along as well. Send information to nwnews@nwosu.edu.
I’ve always thought working for a newspaper was a great job though fewer mass communication majors want to make that their career these days. Still, the newspaper business is not dead, and for one more year the Northwestern News will be doing what it can to keep the business alive.
We’ve had terrific support through the years from our administration—Dr. Bo Hannaford exhibited that support with the message he wrote for the front page today..
Advisers at other universities and colleges often report fights with administrators who want to control what the newspaper prints. We are lucky here at Northwestern where a free press is valued. The entire mass communications program appreciates this support.
Our administrators, faculty and staff have usually been great about helping our students by agreeing to interviews and providing photos or other information for our stories. These students are often far from the excellent mass communications professionals they will be one day, so we appreciate your patience today as these students start sharing what for some of them will be homework for the entire campus to read. That’s a little scary to think about, so we hope you will all be kind.
And keep reading. Too many students—mass comm included—don’t read newspapers anymore. Remember, we all need to stay informed, even as students.