So this is it for me and my time at Temple — more importantly, the Temple News. It’s been three years of learning. Learning what no class at Temple or anywhere could teach me. How many of you expected that statement? I really can’t state that enough, but I’ve said it and now I won’t again, because I don’t want this to be the normal run-of-the-mill sign-off column.
Next semester, when Jeremy (hmm, this is a before-the-fact announcement) takes the helm, you will have a very different newspaper. It’ll be Philadelphia Inquirer-size and with the way we’ve improved each semester, the stories will be worthy of broadsheet. They’ve far surpassed the tabloid format that the TN has been printing on for years.
We’ve done much soul-searching here over the past three years to turn around the paper, and I just have to add that because of this, we are the pillar of the student media at Temple and not a Column.
All of this effort has garnered quite a few awards and positions for the TN staff, so I believe we can call ourselves an award-winning paper. Maybe that’s going out on a limb and maybe those awards don’t matter. Surely the money is nice. But there is nothing like sitting at our table at each new student information session event and having a parent tell their teenager to pick up a copy of the school paper to find out what is really going on within the University — something which was shown on a weekly basis within our pages.
So I guess this is a perfect time to get into thanking those who deserve it.
To Jill and Dev, my preceding EICs, thanks for giving me a starting point.
To Tanitha, thanks for taking the news position when no one else wanted it and continuing to clean it up. Also, your stint as Managing was a blast. Thanks for being a great friend all these years as well.
To Neal, last semester wouldn’t have been what it was without you.
To Mike, thanks for taking Tanitha’s job and making news news. Get some sleep!
To Jeremy, thank you for filling in this year and making opinion opinionated. You’ll do fine next year.
To Lauren and Stephen for giving us photos to go with those stories, it’s been tough, but your help has been more than appreciated.
To Jigsha, we left Textile for this! Damn right. Thanks for setting such high standards for online. You’ve been a great friend, Lime.
To Monika and the ad department, thank you for giving us some money to work with!
To Sean and the business office, thanks for managing the money Monika made so well.
To Aaron, Julian and Tim, thanks for making the paper look as presentable as it has been. We keep getting tons of comments from advertisers and other papers.
To John, for great advising and being a great pro-TN spokesperson. Have you told the Dean we fired you?
To Bernie, Linn and Tom, for being such great supporters and offering constructive criticism when needed, and lifting us up during other times.
Thanks to Chris for taking sports beyond football and basketball.
Thanks to John for getting his shit in on time, for the most part. The free CDs were nice, too.
To Heather and Michael, thanks for a great year of copy editing and filling vacancies in next year’s staff.
And as my last abuse of editorial control, I’m firing the entire staff.
We’ve been hard on the University and all aspects of it when we needed to, but I don’t think many of us would have gone elsewhere given the chance.
So those were my words of wisdom. Not really jewels, but many years of experience. During those years, there were the multiple all-nighters and sleeping in class, when I did go. I never meant any disrespect, but this is the Temple News and in here, that’s how it goes.
Brian Swope can be reached at bswope@att.net
Be the first to comment