Journalism at UMD

This week's issue of The Statesman left me feeling inspired. After reading, I wanted to turn off all the lights, ride the bus, pick up trash, drink less coffee, support street musicians, and help people in flood zones. And in a way I really didn't expect—because I could not at first get past the dragon slayer analogy—Jesse Meehl's opinion piece on EPA regulations served to pull these separate gestures of good sense together. Until the energy business is regulated, Meehl suggests that we “stick to things that we know help,” and this issue made we want to do those things more.

In the spirit of making small gestures, I offer this list of other things this week's Statesman made me want to do. I hope some of them help.

Open the paper. The front page effectively captures my attention with its striking photo and promises relevant and varied coverage within the paper. And this may not have been intentional, but I liked that the first line of Eric Ludy's article on Dean Krug's resignation as CLA Dean echoed the front page photo. Perhaps we all have new mountains to climb.

Learn about broomball. UMD students are an active, varied lot, and they win national titles in sports I didn't even know existed. Kudos to the sports writers for coverage that highlighted the accomplishments of a range of students in readable, informative prose.

Connect global struggles with local contexts. Of the many pieces that do this, I particularly appreciated Meghan Buttler's take on the budget crisis. This is a welcome continuation of budget-related coverage, and I hope someone takes seriously the wonderful suggestion that students could share expensive supplies and other resources.

Wish I could see the forest and not the trees. Forgive me, but I can't help but notice that the paper misspells Its. Own. Name. And the name of its building. Twice. In ads inviting people to come and work for it. There were also two headlines with major errors—a subject-verb agreement and a comma splice. We all make mistakes, but these are big ones. Overall, I'd like to see the editors doing a bit more with issues of usage, too: “up the ante” and “ante up” do not mean the same thing at all, and “were being available” is a phrase I don't think I've ever come across before.

Ask Robert what I should be agreeing with him about. I enjoyed Dayna Landgrebe's article on Robert Duerst's understated gospel-spreading campaign. This piece was just one element of what seemed like a well-rounded issue. However, even after reading the whole story about agreeing with Robert, I can't figure out what I would be agreeing with if I were to agree with Robert, whom I actually often agree with, as he is a student in one of my classes. But I couldn't make the pieces of the article add up, and in the end, I wonder if the article needed to be a little less understated than Duerst's campaign.

Promote understatement. Lately, every time I see the masthead, I think of the similarity between “UMD Statesman” and “understatement(s).” I don't know what the staff might do with it: Use it as a title for the news briefs (which I echo Chris Julin in liking very much as a regular feature)? Retitle “Hollywood & Vine” or even use it as a way to bring that column's focus closer to the UMD community? Well, it could be a good title for something, and you can have it. As my favorite quote of this week's issue puts it, “‘Everyone responds to the word ‘free'.”

Learn more about how advertising works. The U-Pass story is good, but I kept wondering if there were a potential conflict of interest in running this story on page 2 while an advertisement promoting the same material ran on page 28. I honestly don't know. Another stumper: who exactly does Mara Minwegen-Mulcahy think reads this paper? Are there many UMD students needing help with patents, academic publications, fiction, and translated works?

Laugh. Eric Johnson, in his editorial on our caffeinated culture, says that “one would like to think 18- to 23-year-old college students are able to exercise some restraint and realize guzzling through energy drinks is not the best idea.” Hey, if I didn't like 18- to 23-year-olds, I wouldn't be a professor. But if they can't do it with beer, why would they do it with Red Bull?

Get out into the community. This week's issue of The Statesman was, for me, a coherent and compelling blend of pieces that made me both appreciate the UMD student body and also want to connect more with the rest of Duluth and the region. This was one of the best issues I've seen in awhile: it captured the idea that no change is too small to make a difference. It may have been the April Fool's issue, but that's no joke.