I was ecstatic when I earned the role of “party nun” in my elementary school’s production of The Sound of Music. Alongside 20 other fourth-graders, I acted as a lineless backdrop, twirling around the abbey during “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” before ripping off my habit to reveal a glittery gown for “So Long, Farewell.” As my parents reminded me after the show, “the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is the extra.”
While perhaps less blasphemous, my current job as a student journalist requires a similar “extra-ness”, —”extra-ness” in trying to do justice to others’ perspectives on campus and the change they call for at their events. Working to speak truth to power in this source-forward way is the foundation of The Tribune‘s mandate, allowing us to both communicate what is and advocate for what could be. Yet, as a well-meaning acquaintance asked me last year, “All love, Mairin, but who’s reading campus papers anyway?”
I was unsure how to answer. I struggle all the time with combatting what I call “student jour-nihilism”: The sense that it is impossible to appropriately capture the injustices of the world in, or drive tangible change through, a 600-word story, so why write one, anyway? Yet falling into this pernicious trap is what will squash campus papers’ earnest, compassionate, and incredible coverage that has cemented so much invaluable social change.
Journalist spaces are undeniably in trouble. A proliferation of artificial intelligence and other ‘efficiency’ measures have certainly contributed to the 10,000 media job losses in Canada since 2020. Never mind the emotional burnout those covering the most horrific facets of humanity face, explaining why 56 per cent of journalists in the United States considered quitting in 2024.
If legacy outlets are in peril, student newspapers are left even more vulnerable, with their coverage not buoyed by subscribers, major advertising revenue, or legal teams. Student journalists have to manage their course loads while working tireless hours each week as writers, researchers, fact-checkers, and editors. They must account for the disciplinary and safety threats posed by criticizing their university’s administration and navigate deadlock as the student demands they cover are met with indifference—or ignored entirely. How can we keep screaming as our voices get hoarser?
When my own student jour-nihilism edges too near, I am reminded of author Omar El Akkad’s observation that “to be accused of speaking too loudly about [injustice] is to be told, simply, to keep quiet.” The difference between ordinary reporting and extraordinary journalism is the extra time and care student journalists invest in being unapologetically and tirelessly LOUD. It is the solidarity campus papers show with their student communities by preserving and publicizing their peers’ ferocious drive toward what is right. It is how student journalists paint a vision of what is radically possible: By fighting an uphill battle against present injustice, in their own words and on their own terms. It is believing in the power of those words to reverberate.
When I stepped into my role as a Managing Editor at The Tribune, I read decades of coverage to reflect upon what the paper has historically missed in its publishing. In the process, I stumbled across a 2011 Sports article about my late brother Brendan, who was an advocate for LGBTQ+ athletes. I bet the author never expected Brendan’s family to encounter the piece. But seeing some of the grief I carry with me every day reflected on a page reminded me more than ever that campus papers speak directly to students’ souls and preserve archives of what matters most to them, years down the line.
As the piece about Brendan states, “there’s [always] someone [who] paves the way forward.” Despite student jour-nihilism’s attempts to undermine them, campus papers pave the way by persistently reminding fellow students that their missions for change are seen, heard, and honoured. Student journalists must persist in being fierce and hopeful as they boldly amplify their peers’ galvanizing work, and as they write their own words of dissent and ambition that dare to imagine something better. We cannot say “So Long, Farewell” to campus journalism when it immortalizes the fight for our shared humanity.
