With the turn of the new year, you probably thought of a few resolutions to conquer for yourself, and The North Wind has a few of its own.

The last few years there has been an atmosphere of distrust surrounding the media and 2018 is looking no different. The term “fake news” is bounced around like a hacky sack and comes most frequently from the mouth of our president. With “fake news” comes the public’s general wariness in interacting with the media. But the more communication people engage in with the media, the more representative of the people and accurate the media can be.

We’ve experienced this wariness even at the collegiate newspaper level. While covering the last presidential election, staff found contacting and communicating with political parties increasingly difficult. Students are even apprehensive just to answer questions such as: “What was your favorite part of break?” if they know it will be published in the paper.

By continuing and improving the quality of our coverage, we hope we can remove some of this stigma even if only within our student body.

Our goal is to create content that is unbiased, interesting and inclusive of all groups. We’re students just like the majority of you and we make mistakes, but we are more than happy to correct them and to hear your opinions. We cannot create a paper that is representative of the campus community if we aren’t hearing directly from this community.
Would you like to see a specific event or group covered? Are you looking for a how-to article on a specific subject? Do you feel we aren’t equally representing a group or event?

We must be made aware of the public’s opinion to be able to represent the public. You may find national news sources untrustworthy and are unsure of how to change that, but you can impact your local media simply by picking up the phone, logging into social media or stopping by The North Wind office. A broader range of coverage comes with the public’s willingness to interact with the media.

We hope this new year is filled with news tips, article submissions, letters to the editor and visitors in our office letting us know just what they would like to see when they pick up a copy of The North Wind.