Why No National News?

I often wondered in earlier years at Spec why the paper doesn’t run any national news wire articles. National news, after all, is pretty important and easy to print if subscribed to wire services. Even if there were not enough space in the paper for all the news out there, in theory an editor could set the day’s agenda by choosing to run the 2 or 3 biggest national stories as of print time. The reason we avoid this has to do with our mission as a newspaper and our slightly different mission as a student organization.

I think the answer to this is simple. First of all, logistics: time and money, specifically. We simply want to spend our money on original product - printing ink on paper costs many hundreds of dollars every night, and we want to use our finances to go to student work about the immediate coverage area. Time - or rather, timing - is another factor. In theory we’d save time by printing Associated Press stories, since they would require very little effort on our part. We’d PDF earlier! But, essentially, the news never sleeps anymore - by the time the Spec hit the stands whatever national news we chose might already have been surpassed by more important events. Witness the New York Times Web site, which (if you happen to be up all night in Butler, you might have noticed) continually updates, even at 4 a.m. Sure, they’ve chosen their morning issue’s content already, but they produce more editions throughout the day.

The other reasons we don’t run national news have to do with our two-sided mission. As a newspaper, we try to serve the immediate area - we strive to know more about Morningside Heights or Columbia than the pros (and have occasionally been acknowledged for succeeding at this - occasionally, of course, we get scooped, like anyone) and to bring readers that knowledge and more diligent focus. Just a few years ago we still ran world news, but our staff and organization has grown so that we can fill about 10-16 pages daily on our own.

The main reason for me as EIC to not run world news is that, as a student organization, we want to nurture our staff (that’s half the point, half the time - does that make it a quarter the point?) and have a good time with an extracurricular activity. (This distinction between the mission qua newspaper and qua volunteer club can be tough to distinguish, particularly since we publish information and opinions about other student clubs, but the distinction still stands). If we’ve helped the 200-odd people on staff find a passion, improve their talents, and have fun doing it,  we’ve already done pretty well as a board. Running national news doesn’t completely fit that cadre.

We’ll see in December (when this board says goodbye to all that) whether that made any sense.