Last week, the staff of The Griffin was fortunate enough to have gone to Long Beach, CA. for the Associated Collegiate Press’ annual National College Media Conference. At the conference, we spoke to and heard from fellow college newspapers from all over the country, learning more about journalism and about colleges in general.
We learned that the fact that our newspaper remains a printed one makes us an outlier. We have touched upon this in our paper before, but it became especially apparent at this year’s conference. Many times, we were the only members of a printed newspaper in the room. And many times, professional journalists said their best advice for print publications is to go digital. So many times, we reminded ourselves to be grateful to everyone in the Canisius community for allowing us to do what we do. It is a privilege to print, and one – if our fellow students throughout the country are to be believed – that others wish they could have.
It also deserves mentioning the reaction that we got when we would tell people that we are from Buffalo. After the condolences we got for the cold weather they knew we had been previously enduring and the suffering that the Sabres must bring us, the fact that we were from Buffalo was always quite impressive to others. One of Canisius’ points of pride is its commitment to providing experiential learning opportunities, and it’s something we may take for granted at times. Many other schools told us that their school would never allow them to go to a conference such as the one we were at if it took place across the country, while ours gave us every resource to get there. (Now that we think about it, maybe they were trying to get rid of us.)
Another thing that made us different from other school papers: we learned that a sizable percentage of people who work on their school newspapers get paid a salary, while we do not (cough cough). (That’s a joke…unless…). It was clear to us that Canisius is quite unusual in that sense, but we argue that is not a bad thing. In the middle of a Griffin staff game night in the lobby of our hotel, a group of students making a podcast approached us. They said they heard us discussing our staff’s size and production process in breakout sessions throughout the day and were highly intrigued. We told them about our insane workloads, our lack of non-staff involvement, and with it all, our devoted love for our paper – which we take in place of monetary compensation. This ensures that our work is motivated honestly, personally and by the desire to serve our school.
As well-written and perfectly produced as these other schools’ publications were, our pride in our print never wavered under the heat of comparison. Rather, perspective was given. Not only do they have the advantages of large, highly funded media centers, big schools and flocks of journalism majors; but many of these schools publish bi-weekly, or even monthly, online-only newsletters and magazines. We realized that with less resources and less staff, we’re able to produce something physical, produce it more often, and we do it just because we want to. If that isn’t a reason to stand tall amongst dozens of college media powerhouse schools, we aren’t sure what is.
This isn’t meant to be a tooting of our own horn. This relates to one of the themes we heard throughout the conference, this year as well as years prior: that, at its best, journalism helps build and gets energy from the community. We – the writers – are lucky for you – the readers – and the entire Canisius community, who have been just as passionate about our prints as we are.
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