Three years and eight months ago I found myself walking around the town of Geneseo with a candidate for the state Senate for an hour and a half, compiling tons of notes and learning a lot about navigating political language. Thus was my first experience of reporting news for The Lamron. It’s been a hell of a journey since then, and it’s hard to believe it all comes to an end this week.
While, unlike some of my very talented colleagues, I will not be pursuing journalism in any form as a career path, my role on The Lamron has been absolutely central to my experience and identity at Geneseo these past four years. Whether reporting on the most important news events on campus like state budget cuts, department deactivation and curriculum revisions or constructing arguments for the newspaper’s opinion section to get people to talk openly and honestly about race, difference and social justice, I have been completely immersed in this project we call The Lamron for four years.
Looking back, I am humbled and honored to have had the opportunity to learn from fantastic and knowledgeable mentors and to have moved into the role of a mentor to others over the years, first as news editor, and then as editor-in-chief.
Thinking about it now, I realize that this is what The Lamron is. More than just a completely student-run newspaper with a circulation of 3,000 copies per week and a fledgling online presence, The Lamron is an organization of people who want to be a part of a project bigger than themselves, for any number of reasons. And this project creates wonderful opportunities to rise, fall, laugh, cry, learn and grow with other people who have come along for the ride, all while an audience of over 5,000 watches for the product of their labors every single Thursday, ready to scrutinize every mistake – major and minor – and praise every triumph.
And thinking about these past four years, it’s been wonderful to be a part of an organization that has grown and improved every single year. I am incredibly proud of not only the work that I’ve contributed to this paper, but of the work of every single person – writer, photographer, business team member, designer or copy editor – who has ever put their effort into this organization. Thank you, all of you.
We’ve certainly had our ups and downs. There are sections of the paper that are light-years ahead of where they were in terms of content and layout even as recently as two years ago. Then there’s our website, which is still an ongoing project to bring to where it should be. But that’s part of the beauty of this student organization. We take the bumps with the little victories, and those of us who become part of the core members of the organization have an eye on the big picture, even as we agonize over the tiny details at 5 a.m. – where to use a dash or a comma or how to line up two columns of text just right. And that is absolutely priceless.
So goodbye Geneseo. Thank you for reading my news reports, kicking my butt when necessary and listening to all of my “liberal dogma” over the years. It’s been an honor to be editor-in-chief this year, and I look forward to next year, when the Geneseo community gets to see what the fantastic new e-board has up its collective sleeve for this organization. It will probably be better than I can even imagine. After all, that’s what it’s all about.