TKS Editors Blog

…will usher in a new era of journalism at Knox College. Why, you ask? Because the unstoppable news team of Charlie and Anna will be reunited.

I’d like to take this opportunity to give a tremendous kudos to Charlie for all of the work he did fall term by himself. Let me tell you, running the news section of TKS is no easy task, much less doing it alone. Last term, Charlie came up with story ideas when nothing was happening, managed a staff of almost entirely new writers (while trying to increase mentoring time with said staff), put together the entire news section every Wednesday, pulled more than his own weight in terms of assignments and dealt with publications office debacles with the grace of a pro. He produced some excellent reporting while working to develop the talent in our young writing staff. He’s modest, and so he’s not going to like that I’m posting this here, but he can deal, because he’s pretty awesome.

If Charlie did all of that by himself, wait until you see what we’re going to do together. Expect more coverage of national and international affairs. Expect more hard-hitting investigative stories. Expect more multimedia reporting. But don’t just expect it; hold us to it. We do journalism because we love it, but we ultimately do it for you, our audience, and we don’t like to deal in empty promises.

(Who knows; maybe Charlie will even make an appearance on this blog! Or another editor besides Katy and me. I can dream.)

The person in the corner who doesn’t read TKS because they don’t have time or they don’t want to sift through our user-unfriendly website. (Don’t worry; we’re working on that.)

http://www.facebook.com/theknoxstudent

We’ll post our most interesting articles. We’ll ask for your opinion on any number of campus issues. We’ll even remind you when the new issue of TKS comes out each week (Thursday evenings, in case you didn’t know).

Got a lead on a story? Tell us on Facebook! Have an event you’d like covered? Tell us on Facebook! Have a viewpoint on an article (and you go to Knox, so we know you have one)? You know what to do.

You now have no excuse not to stay connected with TKS. You’re welcome.

This post is a thank-you to anyone who has a friend working on TKS. Because, let it be known: if you are friends with a TKS editor, you have a lot to put up with.

You are our main source of quotes. Yes, we try not to interview friends, but when we’re writing an article at 1:55 a.m. and the only person around is you, our close friend who we’ve known since freshmen year, you’re going to be giving a quote, whether or not you know anything about our topic or not. Also, you’d better be articulate about it.

Secondly, you will be asked at least once a week whether or not you want to write for us. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to and it doesn’t matter how many times you say no. At some point, you’ll be writing an article for us. It’s far easier for me to count the number of friends I haven’t gotten to write an article than the number of friends I have. If I catch the flu right before I’m supposed to go cover The Crucible, guess who I’m going to call to beg to please, please do it for me just this once.

Also, we never shut up about TKS. Ever. As soon as the new issue comes out, we have to read it and critique it. We have to turn every thought into a potential article. We have to go to meetings all the time and you can only find us on Wednesdays if you’re willing to brave the long shadow of the Publications Office. You don’t want to go to the Gizmo with us because we’re bound to run into another editor and discuss the latest TKS gossip for at least half an hour (and, trust me, there’s always TKS gossip). We won’t go to Union Board events without a reporter’s notebook and we’ll be sure to embarrass you afterward as we run up to random strangers and ask their opinion on the act of the evening.

We have our writers interview our friends. We text them at odd hours asking for phone numbers and names of people they know who we don’t. We drag them to our TKS parties, even if what they actually wanted to do was somewhere on the other side of campus. We use them as stress relief when something TKS-related goes wrong (often). Yes, it can be safely said: although they might not work for TKS, a lot of our friends are convinced they do.

It should also be said, though, that we truly appreciate it. You who have unintentionally become our official liaison into the music department, you who find yourself quoted week after week, you who continue letting us rant and keep going to Union Board events with us and still hang out in the Gizmo even though we might show up: thank you. You might not work for the paper, but you’re a large part of why we’re sane (or insane) enough to keep doing so.

Ladies and gentlemen, I write of a great travesty that has stricken our dear college. Why, why, why has the top story on theknoxstudent.com only received 151 hits? There are more than 151 students at Knox, are there not? (Or has the school finally decided that progressively bigger classes + lack of space = everyone getting up in my personal bubble?)

Freshmen, let me implore you: be in the know. Care about what is going on around campus. Knox will be your home for the next four years, and what happens here will often affect you in a very personal way. There’s a lot that’s changed even since I was at Knox in May: the smoothie bar in the Caf, the dumb backpack policy in the Caf, plenty of other things in the Caf (my life most certainly does not revolve around food), and, of course, our new president and Breitborde’s impending retirement (which we all knew was coming, but still).

Knox students often complain that they aren’t told anything about administrative decisions. They say they don’t know what Student Senate does. They moan and groan about being unfamiliar with school policies. Lo and behold, there is a solution! TKS is chock-full of information, and it’s easy to find: in the Gizmo, in the mail room, and of course, online. We even have a handy dandy Twitter feed for those of you who are into that.

There is an elephant in the corner of this post: this blog is linked directly to the TKS website, and if you don’t know that it exists, you’re probably only going to find it through that. Thus, the people reading this likely already read TKS. To you, kudos for caring about what’s happening at Knox. Kudos for caring about your fellow students’ work and opinions. Now, I challenge you to poke your friends/roommate/suitemates/that random kid in Founders and encourage them to visit theknoxstudent.com as well. The coverage this week is fantastic, with everything from why composting has been delayed to reviews of quirky albums. (Thanks, Christopher Poore; I always discover something new from reading your work!) And you know you want to procrastinate on your homework anyway. So really, what’s stopping you?

For last year’s freshman issue, I wrote an article with the working title “Hello, we have no deans and about half of a president” in reference to the departures of Deans Bailey and Romano and Roger’s impending retirement. I am pleased to say that this year, we do indeed have deans, and we have a fantastic new president. Teresa Amott, welcome to Knox College. We’re excited to see what you’ll bring to campus.

This year, I’m writing an article tentatively titled “Flunk Day is a myth” with the byline “Bringer of Flunk Day truth.” My maturity has clearly reached new heights over the course of the past year.

Returning students: what are you looking forward to about this year at Knox? Freshmen: same question.

People say that when your job consumes your life, your coworkers become your best friends. It wasn’t something I believed wholeheartedly until I found a job I really loved. My part-time gig at the local library during high school gave me gas money and an extensive knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System but not much else. I liked being surrounded by words, but I didn’t just want to check them in and out; I wanted to write them. With TKS, I had the opportunity to do just that–and get paid for it.

I’ll be honest: the pay at my library job was better. The average TKS editor probably puts in 20-25 hours of work a week and gets compensated for 8. You don’t do it for the money. You do it for the camaraderie that comes from spending your Wednesday nights in a cramped office, yelling obscenities at the computers and discussing the merits of the Oxford comma. You do it for the people who will argue with you, even if they are heretics and won’t use the Oxford comma even outside of journalistic situations. You write stories for your audience, but you also write them for each other. The best tips come from your co-editor who works in an administrative office and catches snippets of college drama around the coffeemaker. The best insight comes from your co-editor who’s interviewed almost every professor on campus and knows who to talk to and when. The best stories are produced by a team, with one person reading through city ordinances at 1 a.m. and another finding a press pass for the reporter whose tape recorder is always running.

John has put together an excellent team for next year, and it’s exciting to welcome Charlie, Paige, Matt, Grant, Carina, Michelle, Sam & Sam, Gretchen, and Elizabeth (HA OXFORD COMMA HA) to the pub office. Maybe they will surpass previous editors and actually use this blog. (One can dream.) But it’s not about surpassing–not really. A good editorial staff builds on the work of previous editors. And our previous editors have done a lot.

Tomorrow morning, nine former TKS editors will graduate. Who will write the dirty investigative stories now that Ben is gone? Who will fill Kevin’s role of being sarcastic about everything? Who will indulge my OCD if Anni and Rachel can’t?

I’m excited about the new staff, especially my new co-editor, the fantastic Charlie Gorney. It’ll just take a little getting used to. But I’ll come back in January after spending the fall in Berlin and find everyone to be working together seamlessly in an atmosphere as intense and wacky and fun as before.  Right, guys?  Right?

Defeating a terrorist organization is not like defeating a traditional enemy in wartime. A traditional enemy has a face. He is tangible. You can shoot him and see him bleed. You can watch him fall before your eyes. You know that when you have battered him enough, he will eventually surrender out of regard for his own life.

A terrorist organization is an ideology. You cannot touch it, though sometimes it may seem palpable as the air thickens. You cannot shoot it and expect it to die. You cannot know when it will surrender. It may have so many limbs that when one is cut off, the others continue to live on unhindered. It is not afraid of death because it knows it will live far beyond the moment. Or perhaps it simply does not fear death on principle. Either way, it is very difficult to kill.

The death of Osama bin Laden has tremendous symbolic importance for American morale and domestic policy. It provides a rallying point for a country largely divided in its foreign policy. It allows for the feelings of patriotism that exploded after 9/11 to surface again. It certainly looks good for President Obama, though the amount of direct influence he had is minuscule.

But the death of a figurehead does not signal the death of an idea.  Thousands will continue to follow his lead.  We have killed Osama bin Laden, but we have not killed what he has created, and we have not changed that the idea continues to ring true for many around the world.

The War on Terror is far from over, if it can ever end (which I believe it can’t).

Nothing has changed.

To my most favoritest editorial board, who will perhaps be perusing the TKS website and see this in the sidebar feed:

Blog.

That is all.

Except for this: Flunk Day had better be on May 5, or it’ll throw off my groove.

I love your weather; I dislike your work.

Yesterday: poetry analysis in German. Result: I now know how to say “iambic” in German. I have challenged myself to somehow make this knowledge useful when I go to Berlin in the fall.

Today: essay defending liberal intergovernmentalism. You’d think it would be easier to write about something with which you agree. You’d be wrong.

Tomorrow: completing the first installment of one of two TKS projects for this term. I’m following four of your lovely peers around for the term, documenting their relative workloads and how they manage their time. It’s as close as I’ll ever get, I feel, to somehow quantifying the college experience. Should I even attempt it? Maybe not. I met a freshman at SNu on Friday night/Saturday morning who had never heard of the Tunak dance (a SNu tradition, for the unenlightened) and watched her wide-eyed amusement as everyone started jumping around and screaming what sounds like gibberish to those unfamiliar with Tunak. While it may be our academics and extracurriculars that shape our career paths, it’s our experiences that shape who we are, from the grand and life-changing to the seemingly ridiculous. It’s a truth I’ll hopefully be able to communicate in my pieces.

I interviewed Andrea Houlihan yesterday for an article, and she said that what drew her to journalism the most (she’s a self-designed International Journalism major) was the opportunity to share stories. To Ari, Sam, Mackenzie, and Marcus: thank you for agreeing to essentially let me stalk you. I hope I can do your stories justice.

As the weather heats up I am able to open my window and freshen my room from the winter staleness. This is a great feeling, but it also puts me on edge as the sun sets. During the sunset the crows that fill the trees around the Knox campus as well as Standish Park begin their nightly routine. Certainly you have heard them or ran for your life as you are under the trees they inhabit.

This routine in combination with a better ability to hear their noises from my open window makes me nervous for my car. Throughout the winter my car has been berated with crow exits, but most not all have washed off over time. Unfortunately this new possibility for exits still make me nervous. A red car covered in white spots and streaks is not something I look forward to.

This is life and hopefully a nice car wash will clean everything up as soon as I’m sure spring is here and no more snow is in the forecast. Hopefully with this warmer weather the crows will also find a new home, far far away from my car.