Student newspaper is not public relations

For those of you who don’t know: The Scout is a student-run, student-produced newspaper. And we will continue to do things this way.

In the past few weeks, we’ve received criticism from members of the administration and Bradley staff for the way we do things. But we don’t think what they’re criticizing us about is fair.

So, let us back up and share what exactly we do here at the newspaper.

Contrary to popular belief, The Scout is not Bradley’s official public relations newsletter. We aren’t babysat by our administration that tells us which stories to write. And we don’t need the university to do our jobs for us.

Every newspaper you see is created by Bradley students. Each story is assigned, written and copy-edited by students. All the photographs are taken by students, and graphic designs and layouts are constructed by students.

All advertisement representatives are students. Up until this year, our payroll was managed by a student business manager. Our website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts are managed by students.

We literally do everything for this newspaper except print the pages. But we do deliver them around campus at 6:40 each Friday morning.

So it’s a little disheartening when people try to control what we publish in our newspaper. Especially when those people aren’t students. Especially when those people don’t respect all the work we put into our newspaper.

This school year in particular, we’ve tried to focus our content on stories students have expressed interest in, or on things we think students should know. It hasn’t always been pretty, and not everyone has been happy picking up a paper on Friday mornings.

We’re just doing our jobs. Reporters are supposed to uncover the sometimes uncomfortable stories that no one wants to talk about. Sometimes we need to write about things that make the university look bad.

Our intention isn’t to hurt feelings or tear Bradley down. Our purpose is to be the university watchdog. And since we are students, just like all of you, this task becomes even more important.

In the past few weeks, we were told to stop doing investigative reporting. We were asked to give up our sources. We were asked to write certain stories and to not write certain stories.

The purpose of this editorial, then, is to politely remind the university community, especially those mentioned offenders, above, that we are journalists, not public relations managers.

The Scout is very much a “real” newspaper, in the sense that nearly every part of it is student-run, and every story and decision is student made.

If we start to give into these demands to tone down our journalistic traits, we give up the whole purpose of student newspapers.

So we leave you with this: if you want to read university-friendly, happy stories, check out Bradley’s website and press releases.

We’re going to continue our long tradition of writing for the students, by the students.

The same thing we’ve done since 1898.