Editorial: Why you should care about the paper

As Co-Editor in Chief of the paper this year, I wanted to let the stories in the paper create their own impression without any opinions from me. That being said, the staff, faculty and student body at Concordia have no idea how much work it takes to produce a weekly paper. The students at Concordia should appreciate this paper for the work it does, and the voice it provides, because all staff members are full-time students as well.

The Concordian is the only news-related publication on campus that is completely student-run. SGA can inform the students and plenty of college news can be found on Concordia’s website. But we are the only publication that doesn’t report to administration and that is incredibly important. We are totally free to write about what matters to students, and we don’t have to worry about keeping it fluffy if an issue is difficult and potentially paints leadership in a bad light. The sole purpose of a newspaper is not to insult leadership, because our administration is intimately involved in student life and they care about our college experience.

That being said, Concordia students should care about The Concordian, because we are the only place where you can protest when the school acts outside of your approval. Your voice does matter here, and we want you to use us as a resource.

Behind the scenes, each staff member devotes at least 4 hours a week to writing and editing. The editors of each section gather every Tuesday night and lay out the pages of the paper from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. We meet Sunday nights to generate story ideas and we deliver the paper Thursday mornings.

We work this hard because we believe in the product. We want to write about what matters to students, and we’ve tried to do that this year. We’ve covered aspects of campus life that often get overlooked and I hope we’ve represented you well. My advice is simple: read the paper, care about the paper and write letters to us. We want to advocate for you.