During my time on staff, I have heard both positive and negative things about our school paper.
Last year, it was the lack of ETSU-related stories along with too many wire articles from KRT. As you may have noticed, we have almost completely done away with wire stories which do not relate to our campus.
With so much going on here at ETSU, over 12,000 students and a newspaper staff of over 30 people, surely there is no need for wire articles.
This year, the complaints have changed, which is always a good thing – this generally means that we have solved one problem and may now begin to tackle the next.
The complaints seem to range from lack interesting subject matter to having too much opinion writing in our paper.
So who is the East Tennessean staff? Who picks the stories we run (or don’t run)?
The East Tennessean is comprised of 19 writers, four section editors, two ad managers, two photographers, two cartoonists and one executive editor. All are students at ETSU, most taking a full load of classes every semester, usually holding down part-time jobs elsewhere in the community and for some odd reason continue to make an attempt at putting a school paper together twice a week every week for precious little pay.
None of us are paid by the hour. Most receive a static amount at the end of every month, others are paid per article or photograph. It is almost depressing when I do the math. If I take my pay divided by the number of hours I worked this week, it comes out to between $3 and $4 an hour, before taxes.
The writers receive $8.50 for their articles, but as any writer knows, a good article takes several hours to compile between the interviews, research and final composition of the piece. Everything you see in this paper was done out of pure passion for newspaper and writing.
We also have print media classes from the journalism department that submit guest articles to us on a regular basis. These students have literally been assigned to every possible beat on campus.
In addition, we ask that all clubs submit press releases or announcements to us when they have an event coming up. Anything short of a blatant advertisement will print if we have room.
So what lies ahead for the East Tennessean? Since we have rid ourselves of wire articles to the best of our ability, we are now looking at the type of content published.
We want you to pick up the paper and be interested in it!
Now given, there aren’t exactly that many scandalously entertaining things going on here at ETSU, so you probably aren’t going to see “SGA president hatches Elvis-impersonating alien baby” headlining the news section anytime soon. Although, if it does happen, we will let you know.
We want to report more on issues that concern you as a student, to the best of our ability. This will not always be an easy task, and there will likely be many slow news days, but we beckon you to stay tuned. The best is yet to come.
Editor’s Note: This article is an unsigned editorial issued by the East Tennessean staff.
The editorial incorporates the opinion of most of the staff and therefore is not attributed to any one person.

Author