By Emily Hancock – Editor-in-Chief
Greetings, Penguins! As the new editor-in-chief of The Independent, I would like to extend a warm welcome to the students of Clark College. I hope that everyone is adjusting well to their schedules and is feeling prepared for this academic year.
This year at The Indy we are going to make some changes that I believe are vital to our mission as a student newspaper, which is: To provide thoughtful, objective and timely news coverage, to serve as a learning lab for students pursuing journalism study and to serve as a forum for reasonable and thoughtful public debate on issues of concern and interest to the college community.
For one, we aim to have as much interaction with our readers as possible to give the people of Clark College a platform to learn and talk about issues that matter to them. To do this, we will solicit commentary pieces from students and employees. We encourage our readers to submit commentary about any topic that they see fit, whether it be academics, politics or even economics. We would also like to encourage readers to submit political cartoons or short comic strips. Commentary should be no longer than 500 words. Cartoons should take up no more than ¼ page, comic strips no more than ½. All work should be signed and include a phone number and email address. Once submitted to theindependent@students.clark.edu, art and commentary become the property of The Independent. Writing is subject to editing for length, clarity and style.
We will also be increasing our online presence by emphasizing use of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can find a list of our staff’s social media accounts at www.clarkcollegeindependent.com.
This year, reporters from The Indy will be recording interviews whenever possible in the interest of ensuring accurate reporting. We encourage and appreciate your cooperation with this new policy.
Finally, The Indy acknowledges that gender and sexuality are not binary. It is our priority to use a source’s correct pronouns. Thus, we encourage all members of the LGBTQ+ community to communicate their pronouns when being interviewed by an Indy reporter, and our editors and staff will take extra care to ensure their use. The Indy’s managing editor, Ieva Braciulyte and I will attend the College Media Association Diversity Conference this month in Corvallis, where we hope to expand our knowledge related to issues of diversity and share our findings with the rest of our staff.
It is my goal to keep the Clark community informed about the things that matter to them, such as Clark’s massive budget reductions, the enrollment crisis, rising tuition rates and the affordable housing crisis in the Vancouver-Portland area. If you think there is something important happening that we haven’t reported on, please contact us or submit a commentary piece related to the issue.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at editorinchief@students.clark.edu. I would love to hear from you.
Sincerely,
Emily Hancock
Editor-in-Chief
editorinchief@students.clark.edu
