There is something almost strange about being a journalist in college.
You walk into class, grab coffee with your friends, complain about your workload, scroll through TikTok between assignments, and then suddenly, you are interviewing college administrators, professors, or fellow students about an issue affecting your campus community.
It can be easy to forget how much power there is in simply asking a question and searching for the answer.
Today, we live in a world where everyone has something to say. Social media gives us the ability to share an opinion, post a video, or comment on an issue within seconds. Information is everywhere, all the time.
But journalism is a different type of information.
Journalism is not just about having something to say. It is about taking the time to ask why.
Why did this decision happen? Who does it affect? What are people not talking about? What does the other side have to say? And, perhaps most importantly, how do we know this is true?
Those questions are what make journalism so important.
Before becoming involved in writing journalism, I mainly thought of news as something that happened somewhere else: politics, breaking news, and major investigations.
Since, I have learned that journalism does not have to be about something happening across the country to matter.
It could even be happening right down the hallway, at our school, or even with our closest acquaintances.
College newspapers cover things that directly affect the student body: tuition, administration, campus policies, dining, and decisions made by the people running our school. These stories rarely make national headlines, but they matter to the people who live here.
So while you are sipping your coffee in Cool Beans, new stories are being created every second.
Yet, as student journalists, we are not just writing stories about the campus; we are part of it. We experience many of the same challenges and changes as the people we interview, and that connection reminds us why these stories need to be told.
Ultimately, journalism is about curiosity, questioning, and holding others accountable, as people deserve to know the truth. Sometimes journalism does not begin with a huge national headline; sometimes it just begins when a journalist asks a simple question. And for us, that question is the most important thing we can do.