<f a new year and as people make their new year’s resolutions, we at The Carletonian would like to take this opportunity to make some resolutions of our own.
Every Friday you can rely on The Carletonian to be waiting for you in the baskets in Sayles. We recognize however that in the last few years, the paper has not entirely fulfilled its responsibility as an accessible source of information on campus.
In this coming year, we hope to change that.
As an independent weekly newspaper at a small college, we are faced with many challenges—a tight budget, small staff, and few courses offered in journalism. Additionally, living in such a small, wired community, who needs a weekly printed paper to find out what’s going on?
However, it’s not that simple.
Even if it’s only symbolic, the newspaper does represent our community in many important ways. Most literally, it is a forum for communication and dialogue on our campus. While many people might not write columns or letters to the editor, the availability of this forum is what really matters.
The student newspaper is one of the few sources on campus that provides information about upcoming and past events on campus. Whether it’s something as small as a departmental lecture, or something as big as the revisions to the alcohol policy, you can count on us to cover it.
Despite all of these challenges to being the first to break news on campus, The Carletonian can still have a positive impact on our community. Put simply, there’s no reason a excellent school should not have an excellent newspaper.
Additionally, whether or not you value student newspapers, these publications have a strong impact on prospective students and their families, trustees faculty, staff, alums, and parents. We want the paper to project an accurate image of what it is like to be a student at Carleton today. All of these features motivate us to make the paper better.
Here is what we’ve been up to:
Last year we overhauled the layout of the paper, and this year we are focusing on improving the content.
We aim to produce a more accessible, readable paper that people actually want to pick up and read. This paper will ideally be an insightful source of information about what is happening on campus—and not just a list of boring events that took place during the week.
We want to make reading The Carletonian more than just an empty Friday ritual—that means covering stories that genuinely interest all Carleton community members from students to faculty and staff.
If there is anything you would like to see in the paper, we invite your feedback.
All campus publications serve their own purpose. We hope to fulfill ours.