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The Free Press — great or greatest student newspaper?

Many say the newspaper is disappearing. Experts, bloggers and, I suspect, more than a couple people at Boston University believe, as the snotty kid in a recent Simpsons episode said, “Ha ha, your medium is dying.” In Boston, it’s hard to watch the profession that aims to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable deal with a new social sector: the apathetic and appeased, those who simply aren’t supporting an old market model. Watching the city’s media institutions struggle as I guided an independent student newspaper through a financially motivated move this semester, I never once doubted that I was making the right decision to pursue the truth — either for myself or my readership.

As the bruises, cuts and muscle aches earned from moving furniture from the former Daily Free Press office through a January Nor’easter prove, trying to be a journalist right now hurts. To skirt financial ruin, the Free Press relocated this semester. Outside the new office at 648 Beacon St., smack in the middle of Kenmore Square, I no longer see someone hawking Boston NOWs when I emerge around dawn. Inside the office, however, I see the spark of something I believe is important.

Within the already-desecrated walls of the new office, I’ve engaged in two-hour debates about presidential endorsements and interviewed a city councilor whose policy had been rightly called out on the Editorial Page. I’ve laughed until it hurt, and I’ve engaged in more tyrannosaurus-inspired girl fights than will ever be OK. I’ve wondered with editors why our reporters aren’t getting the straight answers they deserve from university officials and how we can explain to our readers that the public relations militia at BU is mind-bogglingly effective, right down to its daily web updates.

We at the ol’ Free Press are almost universally in love with our medium — our still photos and anecdotal ledes spilling down the top right corner of Page One. It’s difficult to imagine that we someday won’t be able to practice our craft in newsprint. I love the already broken-in office and obscene decorations. I (irrationally) love the late hours. I love knocking on doors and asking you questions.

Most importantly, however, I love the truth.

And the numbers about the job market for reporters probably aren’t lying. Between now and 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects there will be a staggering 1 percent increase in “reporter and correspondent” jobs, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook. (A search for “journalist” in the same database yields no results — as the old saying I can’t quite attribute goes, a journalist is just an out of work reporter.) In the same time period, public relations specialists can expect an 18 percent increase in available jobs. In less than a decade, there will be 286,000 flacks for a mere 60,000 hacks.

Luckily, I do not love money. No editorial staffer at the Free Press is paid, and if the statistics are right, the chance that the professional field is going to involve more cushy positions and fewer unpaid internships is slim. This is too bad, because if there ever was a time to push for passionate fact-finding and knowledge gathering, it’s now. And, for me, it will also be next semester.

I’ll return to the “long, irregular hours and pressure to meet deadlines,” as the Labor Bureau says, in the fall. Until then The Daily Free Press wants you to get informed.

Stephanie Perry

Editor-in-chief

Stephanie Perry, a junior in the College of Communication and the College of Arts and Sciences, is the editor-in-chief of The Daily Free Press.

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This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.

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