Eder Campuzano

Hello, Lane Community College.

How are you? Have you had a good year? I sure did.

It’s been a little more than 12 months since I got a phone call from The Torch’s production adviser telling me I got the job of 2010-2011 editor in chief. It was a voicemail, actually.
I was wrapping up an assignment at the Eugene Public Library when I listened to it. I went out promptly afterward and celebrated.

The next day I came into the newsroom and the staff congratulated me. Andy Rossback, then our news editor and now our managing editor, gave us a speech about how the medicine bag he had just constructed in his Native American biographies class would bring us good luck.

He placed it on the table and cracked jokes about not taking the assignment seriously. Minutes later, my predecessor entered the newsroom and fired me.

It was a strange start to the year, sure, but I don’t think that bump in the road affected much.
After all, this was no ordinary production cycle for your campus newspaper. For the first time in the publication’s history, the Torch staff has proven that this is not only the best community college newspaper in the state, but the best in five: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska and Montana.

We’ve dissected budgets. We’ve covered campus crime. We’ve told you stories about groundskeepers, young entrepreneurs, dancers, athletes and college staff.

But the news wasn’t confined to our coverage.

I’ll never forget Election Day 2010. KEZI let us in their studio to cover their election night coverage. Our managing editor went out with a kidney stone. Since he usually laid out the paper, it was up to the only other person proficient in Adobe InDesign to do the job.

Yep, that was yours truly.

A few months later four of us traveled to Hollywood for a journalism conference where Harold Camping’s followers harassed us near a Gap store. Rossback, Alan Fox, Brett Stanley and I may have been some of the first people in Lane County to know about the May 21 rapture and ensuing apocalypse.
We’re still waiting.
Then in late March, 10 of us drove to Tri-Cities, Wash. to attend the Society of Professional Journalists’ regional conference and awards contest. We met a Pulitzer Prize winner. We attended more sessions and improved our skills. We won the first regional award The Torch has ever claimed.
On campus, we’ve witnessed tragic accidents, international celebrations, local reactions to national news and much more. There’s never a shortage of material at LCC.
As Rossback says week after week: “Everybody’s got a story to tell.” We’ve strived to tell these tales every issue. And there are plenty of stories left to discover on this campus.
Our advisers always had our backs.
Dorothy Wearne, the paper’s production adviser, offered insight into the design and photo process that I had never thought of. She helped me with payroll, staff management and an array of other issues.
Frank Ragulsky, who will retire as The Torch’s news and editorial adviser this year, showed me that there’s more than one way to dissect the news. He challenged me when I thought I had things figured out for a given story.
Are you sure this is the news? What about another perspective? Wherever I go from here, I’ll always remember the words that I received from my news and editorial adviser at The Torch.
Twelve months ago I came into the newsroom and placed an enormous Foo Fighters tour poster on my office wall. In one week I’ll take it down so Kinzley Phillips can decorate the office with her own flair.
When I put that poster up, I had ideas. I had goals. I had a vision for what this paper would be for three terms. Over the year, editors, reporters, photographers and a lone designer helped shape that vision and added their own elements to it. And it came out better than I hoped it could.
Now that my time at The Torch is over, there’s nothing left but to reflect in hopes that it helps me toward my goal of being a professional journalist. I couldn’t have done it without the help of everyone who’s set foot in this newsroom.
So thank you, Torch staff. Thank you, advisers. But most of all, thanks to all of you who told us your stories when you didn’t have to.

He’s done! But you can still follow Eder Campuzano on Twitter: @edercampuzano