Chris Banyas

Editor-in-Chief

I am pleased to be able to inform you all that a previous headline, “Why This Paper Sucks” to be specific, garnered a lot of attention, much of which was apparently due to the extreme negative energy and bad vibes it exuded, never mind the actual content of the piece.

First impressions are, after all, very important, right?

Well, this may come as somewhat of a shock to many, but I, in fact, do not think The Bengal sucks at all; I believe that it is one of the last bastions where students can acquire truly real-world experience in a profession that is still very much alive, despite what some may have you believe.

Working in a journalistic capacity in a collegiate setting is essentially the equivalent of running through a live-fire exercise each and every week, where the end product of our collected efforts can impact, should impact, and have impacted the university.

Do you know how much the yearly budget of The Bengal is?

I took a trip to BYUI over the summer, to check out its student media program, and guess what? Their student media budget is 10 times what ours is. Granted, their “student media” budget encompasses many more things than our newspaper budget does, but the numbers speak for themselves.

So why doesn’t this publication suck?

First of all, even in years prior to our new approach to content, news and relevant information, The Bengal was staffed by passionate people who routinely cranked out content that, at the very least, showed that employees were flexing their mental muscles, and trying to get the most out of their “training exercise.”

Second, I think that everyone should be aware of what our writers and editors do on a weekly basis, and how little they get paid for it. Essentially they receive story assignments on Sunday and have until the end of the week to set up interviews, research topics, interview people, and eventually write the stories themselves, all while balancing their preexisting class-load, part-time jobs, and any other extra-curricular activities or commitments.

Not to metion the photographers, graphic designer, layout designer and everyone else involved.

And I get it…things are tough all over, right?

Students are universally underpaid and overworked; it’s one of those things that some might consider a part of the formative years of a human being’s life.

But here’s the thing:  there aren’t many college jobs that put students in the line of fire, now more than ever with social media and the accessibility of people via those platforms, quite like journalism.

Certainly some stories require less time than others, but with our new approach the amount of effort required isn’t going down.

To sum up my second point, I’ll tell you a story:  several years ago I worked on a piece that was comprised of interviewing about 10 different people, and probably took about 20 hours of my time. For this effort I was paid $20. That breaks down to about $1 per hour for work that is far from easy.

Those who work in journalism do not do so because of the glamour and ability to make fat stacks of cash.

My intent is not to lobby for higher pay, (though I doubt if anyone ever turned down a raise) but rather to illustrate what the newspaper staff goes through on a weekly basis.

Third, even over the last few years when the content might not have been extremely relevant to the student body, there were many people who supported our publication, through thick and thin, and it is these people who have ultimately kept us going.

To put this another way, The Bengal doesn’t suck, because there are students, employees, teachers and many others who pick up our issues week after week. Even when we receive negative feedback for something we have done, that feedback illustrates an engagement that has occurred:  I would rather have someone call me “a drone” than not comment at all.

On the flipside, it is extremely important for anyone who may be lurking in the shadows of The Bengal to make the move, out of the darkness and into the light, for without student support, the paper is doomed to fail.

Last, and most certainly not least, the fact that the paper still exists is surely a sign of some degree of quality. College papers across the country are making the move toward all digital publications more and more due to many reasons.

While I don’t ever believe all news will be digitized, the mere fact that on our campus you can still pick up a physical copy of a newspaper that was generated by students says a lot, and the fact that the student senate, and by extrapolation the students they represent, have continued to allow us to proceed is huge.

Oh, BYUI’s annual student media budget is roughly $600,000.