It’s been a full year for The Hillsdale Collegian. From breaking national news to printing glaring typos on the front page, it’s been quite a ride. So in our final weekly of the year, we would like to celebrate the best and worst of the student paper this year.
Best:
1. Herman Cain coverage — when the chief of Godfather’s Pizza rolled into town, The Collegian was ready. We live-tweeted, exclusive-interviewed, and behind-the-scenes covered his last major speech as a candidate. The satisfaction from those few days long outlasted Cain’s own campaign.
2. Rick-rolled by Rick Santorum — the former Pennsylvania senator gave the paper three weeks of front page news, an exclusive personal statement about the college, and one of our all-time favorite editorials. We are still disappointed he stood up Hillsdale for Hope College, but we were grateful for all the stories that resulted.
3. Deadline reporting — we must have doubled the amount of stories that were reported and written between Sunday and Wednesday this year. Anything that happened over the weekend qualified for deadline reporting and our staff was all over it. Our freelancers did an especially great job with last-minute reporting this year. We can’t wait to follow their campus coverage for the next three years.
4. City News coverage — our crime coverage was really good this year, from the burglar story to consistent city council coverage. It is gratifying to hear faculty, staff, and community members say they sometimes turn to our page before the local newspaper.
5. Greek news — we wrote stories that were hard-hitting but fair, from new regulations for Alpha Tau Omega to the Delta Sigma Phi house closing, without ignoring the positive news coming out of Greek row like the unprecedented Derby Days fundraising efforts.
Worst:
1. “P.J. O’Rourke’s” Q&A. Mixing up Mark Skousen and P.J. O’Rourke might have been our most embarrassing moment to date. It’s followed closely by several others, though. We like to think we provided some campus-wide entertainment at the very least.
2. Mold Story Blah Blah Blah. The thing that made this filler-headline slip worse,however, was the boring content of the article describing the investigation in Benzing Residence. Yeesh. Our bad.
3. The “Ameria” typo. It might only have been a sub-headline for our Q&A with John Derbyshire, but my gosh, what a typo for a college with as many eagle statues as ours.
4. Printing the wrong race times for division two running champion Amanda Putt. Yikes.
5. The black-out paper. Being a journalist means you write down what people tell you, in the context they said it, and try to communicate the whole of a conversation to readers who weren’t there. In the case of one particular story, we respected the wishes of a faculty member to strike his quotes — a day after the paper hit the press. Everyone was a little bit high on permanent marker fumes that day.
All said, it’s been a great year — or at least a memorable one. The seniors on the editorial board hope next year is even more exciting.
Thanks for reading, Hillsdale!