As you flip through the pages of this newspaper, it only takes a few minutes of your time. You pick up the paper off the stand, give it a glance to see if you know anybody in the pictures, and maybe read a story or two if it captures your attention. But for us, the hope of that story or two capturing your attention means everything. For us, it’s more than just a story. Being a student journalist is about connecting our community and highlighting the things that are important. You see a couple photos and some headlines, but what you don’t see is everything behind those stories.
What you don’t see is the countless hours we spend trying to come up with new topics that will interest people around campus. We spend weeks talking to people we’ve never met before and writing the perfect stories. We cram interviews in between classes and stay up all night laying out the newspaper instead of hanging out with friends. We give ourselves extra homework every single week. We edit countless stories for grammar and fluidity, and we spend days coming up with a headline that is catchy. Every photo perfectly placed and textbox nitpicked apart. We have 20 different sets of eyes laid on every single page until there couldn’t possibly be a mistake. Inevitably, there always is one, though, and it is always pointed out to us by somebody who reads the paper. Being a student journalist is not easy. It’s a lot of grunt work and very little recognition. There are a lot of late nights, it’s a lot of stress, and it is a lot of extra work added on to our busy schedules. But the people in our community are what make it worth our while.
You are the ones that remind us why we do it. We do it for the smile on your faces when we write about something that is important to you. We do it to watch you all be proud when you see your name printed in the paper. We live for knowing your attention was grabbed by that one story or two as you're flipping through the paper. Not every single story is going to be a hit. Not every one of our issues are going to be the best one ever printed, but the ones that are make it all worth it. Your stories are what make Lasell so unique, and having the platform to be able to share them is what brings us joy. Without each of you, we would have nothing to write about. So thank you for teaching us what it means to be student journalists.