So you’ve decided to pick up these three folded sheets of paper.
Maybe this is your first time reading the Weather Vane. Maybe you’re a seasoned veteran who went out of their way to find the nearest newsstand on Thursday afternoon.
Maybe you were getting ready to swipe into the cafeteria when the frontpage photo caught your eye. Maybe someone left this newspaper on the kitchen counter in your dorm. Maybe you’re a professor of humanities reading in your Roselawn office or a chemistry professor in a lab in the Science Center. Maybe you’re an alumnus, a janitor, a VMRC resident, or a prospective student.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, why ever you decided to pick up and read the Weather Vane: I want to say thank you.
Few things at EMU make me feel more content than seeing members of our community reading the Weather Vane or finding the newspaper in the most random places. There are two main reasons I feel this way.
The first is that the Weather Vane is the product of dozens of combined hours of hard work that go into publishing an eight-page newspaper every week.
For our co-editors, the Weather Vane is a part-time job, stressful and at any hour. Staff writers take valuable time out of their weeks to attend events, interview the community, and convert that information into accurate and engaging stories. Opinion writers are vulnerable in publishing their opinions for everyone to read. Photographers also attend events, taking dozens of photos and later editing and sizing them down. Page editors spend the entirety of their Wednesday evenings cutting, pasting, cropping and chopping words and photos into a confined space, stressing until everything looks perfect. Copy editors scan pages diligently, making corrections and suggestions. Weather Vane members do all of these things knowing their work will be read and critiqued by an indeterminate number of people.
The second reason why seeing you, reader of the Weather Vane, makes me content is because there is untold value in keeping informed through hardcopy newspapers in the 21st century.
The value of newspapers is one I learned to embrace while living in Washington D.C. this summer, interning with EMU’s Washington Community Scholars program (WCSC). After my regular morning routine, I made my way to the kitchen downstairs where I poured myself a cup of coffee and checked the front door for the Washington Post. Every morning I sat at the kitchen table with the hardcopy newspaper, coffee, and a bite to eat. Before the 8:40 a.m. bus arrived outside the WCSC house, I folded the newspaper back together and shoved it in my backpack. If I was lucky enough to find a seat on the Metro train, I retrieved the newspaper from my bag and continued reading.
Early in the summer, I began cutting out the best headlines from each issue of the Washington Post and gluing them in a notebook, labeling each page at the top with the day’s date. I did this with just about every newspaper last summer from June through early August.
I’ve been entirely absorbed by the news cycle since the 2016 election. The news cycle includes politics, of course, but it is comprised of so much more than just politics. I find the news both fascinating and terrifying, and I am passionate in my belief that everyone should read the news to stay informed. Reading the news broadens our perspectives of local, national, and global realities, and these realities inform the ways we act and treat each other. I hold to the belief that facts matter. I believe accountability matters. Freedom of the press is one of the key attributes of democracy, but without readers who take in the information laid in front of us by good journalism, facts and accountability lose their weight. An informed public is essential to democracy, especially in the world we live in now.
While everyone absorbs information differently, and there is not one “right” or “best” way to absorb news, nine weeks of reading taught me the benefits of reading hardcopy news instead of online.
I don’t believe we were prepared as a society to suddenly begin obtaining and retaining news from screens. If you were reading this article online right now, you might not have made it this far — it’s fairly likely you would have swiped or clicked on something else that caught your attention. This newspaper, on the other hand, is probably gripped between your hands or sitting on a table in front of you.
On behalf of everyone who keeps the Weather Vane running week in and week out, I want to thank you for reading the paper. I encourage everyone to read the Weather Vane every week, to stay informed on national and international issues, and to explore the value in hardcopy newspapers by visiting the newsstand on the second floor of EMU’s library.
