Whether you're a brand new student stepping onto the quad for the first time or returning to the University of Calgary, you’ve heard that this is a commuter campus.
They’re not wrong by any means, people come to class, they may study here and they go home.
As much as I would like to take on the herculean task of changing that, I can’t do it alone.
Now I recognize, it does look self-serving for the Editor-in-Chief to write about why student journalism matters, but if you’ll allow me, let me explain exactly why it does.
Over the summer (and the year overall) we’ve seen newsrooms shuttered or gutted to barebone operations across the country, this does a disservice to neighbourhoods and communities everywhere.
I can’t help but think about the recent shuttering of 660 News (one of six radio stations), one made by Rogers Sports & Media.
This was a decision that ended with over 200 jobs lost across the country, which left aspirants and colleagues within the industry mourning.
You stop to wonder if this will be the only bit of bad news— but when it rains, it pours— with cuts from Corus to Bell media, you can’t help but wonder if it will ever stop.
These cuts happen for various reasons, loss in advertising revenue, re-structuring in the digital age, and shifting habits from audiences.
When those newsrooms are forced to turn the lights off we lose out on real oversight on those with power in our communities, we lose the ability to stay informed from something as simple as weather updates to something as devastating as corruption, and ultimately we lose out on community.
We lose on the ability to know what is going on, to share our views, to make decisions, to be able to say what is happening is not right, or even celebrate the small victories that bring us together.
We are, as a community, poorer for it.
The honest fact is that the University of Calgary does not offer a journalism program, so our duty as the Gauntlet is to serve as a training ground for the next generation of the fifth estate.
There is a constant debate about what journalism is or should be in the coming years, and that is an honest debate, a good debate that should be held.
However, something we cannot forget is that the ultimate duty of journalists, and something we remind volunteers and staff alike, is that those journalists on the ground level, fighting the good fight, are to serve as public servants.
We are ultimately here to serve the community, to serve you, our readers.
Our role and our responsibility is to make sure that we are keeping you informed, that we are providing oversight of those in positions of power.
This doesn’t change, whether at the level of hyper-local student-level journalism, or on the national stage.
We all share that aspiration to our community.
I have been so lucky to meet so many students who are hungry to be a part of that next generation, which despite everything in the headlines, still makes me hopeful for the future of journalism.
Regardless of what the industry looks like, or how we do the job, the fundamental aspect of serving the community will never change.
Our promise to you, our readers, both first-time and returning readers is to never shirk away from the responsibility to our campus community.
We may not always get it right and we may make mistakes, and honestly I recognize we can’t change the outlook of a commuter campus in our University overnight. But if we play even just a little bit of a role in closing that gap and bringing our campus community together, it will have all been worth it.
I hope either as a reader or as a future reporter breaking stories for us, or when you agree with something or disagree with something in our writing and reporting, you will continue to engage with us and your colleagues on campus.
We as an organization and as a campus community will be better for it.
