On a Side Note | Reporting isn’t easy

News is a tough thing to cover.

I don’t mean to minimize the work anyone else does on campus. After all, we have people training to be nurses and firefighters around here.

So, while peoples’ lives might not depend on whether or not we can write in-depth album reviews or moving features stories — never say never — we put in our fair share of work every week.

Sometimes our job is exciting, like our front page story about the vehicle collision this week or our coverage of the man who was caught recruiting women for questionable photo shoots late Winter term.

You can find drier stories in these pages often enough. Trust me, our reporters have quite a time turning a story about a meeting or a club budget into something you want to read.

Although these stories fall on opposite sides of the interest spectrum, it doesn’t make one type any less important than the other. After all, we wouldn’t cover what some students call “the boring stuff” if it weren’t essential.

Some club budgets are affected by student elections in May. The Board of Education’s decisions impact tuition, college operations and new projects, such as the new Downtown Campus.

It’s our job to bring you the information you need in addition to discovering stories about interesting people related to the college.

And some of the folks in the newsroom have been doing an exceptional job of it this week.

I won’t lie: It’s been a bit rough for everyone at The Torch over the last seven days.

A couple of our editors have been out sick due to different ailments. Another editor may not be able to attend school for the rest of the year due to an injury.

And in the face of these absences, the rest of our staff has done a stellar job of stepping up to the plate.

If you’re savvy enough to read the staff box every week, you’ll notice a few changes.

Warren Hollinshead and Kinzley Phillips are pulling double duty on the news section. Monica Christoffels has also been promoted to senior reporter due to her outstanding work on deadline.

All of our editors thus far have done a great job of generating stories that interest the college’s staff, students and faculty, and I’m confident our three new appointees will rise to the challenge.

I’d just like you to do them a favor and let us know one thing: what would you like to find within these pages and on our website? We’re always looking for a good story and get genuinely excited when we find it.

Our meeting and on-campus event coverage will always exist — after all, we’re just as interested as you are in knowing when the next tuition increase is coming.

But it’s the little things that make this college what it is. We want to find more stories like the one about Ian McMenamin, the business student who runs a successful coral business. Or the Native American beading class our reporters can never find that’s advertised on 25Live. This campus is teeming with interesting stories. What’s yours?