Review Assignment 2

The Columbia Chronicle

The Columbia Chronicle is Columbia's own campus newspaper, written, edited, and produced for Columbia students, by Columbia students. Overall it reads like you would expect a newspaper to read. It certainly has a biased group of topics, seeing as it is a college paper, the journalists tend to write more about issues that effect the lives of an average Columbia student. However, a few of the articles did extend outside the world of Columbia. I'm not convinced that the individual articles could hold their own by themselves, but as an overall publication, I have no doubt that the Chronicle is far superior to your average college-produced newspaper. It has a nice mix of professionalism blended with a laid-back, relaxed feel to it. I think the advertisements say a lot about a paper. In the Chronicle about half of the ads are from the college itself, from the bookstore, to promoting Manifest, to the Student Financial Services' direct deposits. But the rest of the ads seemed like whoever would give them money, thats who would end up in the paper. Which is fine, but its an easy way to tell the caliber of the publication just by looking at the ads. The higher profile the ads, the higher profile the publication.


I would have like to have seen some criticism of the college. For instance, the cover story was about the steady decline in the number of functional film cameras in the film cage. The reason for the declining numbers is because they are too damn old, and they dont make parts for them anymore. I understand their intention behind forcing students to use film, and I can't say I disagree with it, but the point is, I pay a lot for school, therefore I don't want to fight over equipment. That's the kind of argument I wanted to see in this paper. Another article described that Columbia would yet again be raising its tuition prices next semester. Instead of casting this news in the negative light it deserves, the article says: "well, at least its not as bad as some other colleges." I prefer hard-hitting, no holds-barred journalism, not this tiptoeing on the eggshells nonsense. That is not to say the articles were not well-written. They just didn't say what needed to be said.


I did, however, like the obituaries. No, I'm not some guy who enjoys reading about the misfortune of others. I liked the obituaries because of how long they were. In most papers, the obituaries are a short blurb about the person and where they will be buried. Usually a sentence or two. However in the Chronicle, one person takes up a half page. In this issue there were two people being honored on one page, and the additional room allowed the writer to go into some detail about their lives, who they were, and what they accomplished. I would hope that when I pass, I am fortunate enough to get half a page all to myself, and not be lost in the tiny paragraphs of the newspaper obituaries.