Two years ago, I entered the Chungbuk Times. It seems like I became a CBT reporter and went out to cover the news following other senior reporters just a few days ago. I became the editor in chief of CBT after being a reporter. Issuing the university newspaper, I experienced a lot of things, and it has given me unforgettable experiences. Finishing my reporter duties, I want to talk about things that I have felt as a university newspaper reporter.
Firstly, I will say about the situation of the college newspapers at each university. Because of the development of media and information and the communication industry, university newspapers are in a crisis. In the past, many students heard news about their schools through school newspapers. These days, however, students can find the news in their university only by entering the school name in the search box. In this situation, it is sure that many students will not want to read school newspapers by looking for newsstands. It is fortunate that they don’t use university newspapers, which reporters make with their effort by covering cases and editing, as mats during the summer. Although many school newspaper institutions, including Chungbuk National University and Chonbuk National University, are posting their articles on their on-line sites to cope with this problem, many students don’t use the sites and don’t even know about their existence. There are also faults that university newspapers didn’t consider readers’ situations enough while posting articles on on-line sites. These days, much news is broadcast in real time by connecting with famous portal sites such as Naver and Daum. I also doubt who will type ‘?university newspaper’ in search engines and read newspapers these days. I think that school newspapers should keep pace with the rapid changes, and they need to run blogs or apps to deliver their news to students.
Secondly, university newspapers are school-affiliated organizations, so they are issued basically after schools approve them. Because of this intrinsic feature, school newspaper reporters might be restricted in writing articles about some sensitive issues. Due to this reason, the article might not be representing students’ opinions well in some cases. Because of this, a need for alternative student media has arisen. For instance, in some universities like Ewha Women’s University and Joongang University, students are issuing their own newspaper more freely at their own expense.
Although there are many things that school newspapers have to revise, the reason why I mentioned the above two things is that the readers are one of the most important parts in making newspapers. I also think that more freedom given in selection of article topics would be better in encouraging healthy discussions. Even though I didn’t solve these problems, I hope the next reporters will recognize the problems and will try to solve these problems.