Michael Mulcrone and Brian Doyle weigh in on their reasons why you should join The Log, KDUP or The Beacon
by Michael Mulcrone"Were it left for me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter."
- Thomas Jefferson, January 1787
Thomas Jefferson recognized the importance of newspapers. When he wrote these words, the First Amendment did not exist, the Constitution had not yet been written and the "United States" was a raw and unformed amalgamation of former colonies that had not yet coalesced into a nation. Jefferson knew that newspapers would be essential in turning the democratic ideal of "America" into a reality.
This month, exactly 223 years after Thomas Jefferson wrote his words, The Beacon will be putting out its annual call for candidates for staff positions for next year's paper. If he were alive today and rambling around campus, he'd urge you to apply.
The Beacon is one of the most important institutions on campus. To call it "a student newspaper" is misleading and dismissive. The Beacon is a student-run newspaper that articulates the needs and concerns of all the members of the broad University community, including students, alumni, faculty and staff. I don't have the data to prove it, but I'd bet a dollar against a dime that The Beacon is read via its on-line edition by scores if not hundreds of people across the globe. The Beacon isn't a student paper. It's a community paper.
The Beacon is a means which members of the University community, both off-campus and on, can speak openly to each other. Through its opinions and letter page, it provides a forum for discourse and debate for voices that might not otherwise be heard. Beacon editors and reporters also serve as the eyes and ears of their readers. Their mission is to seek the truth and report it so that readers can make informed judgments about issues of importance.
Working on The Beacon is a guaranteed adventure. If you are resourceful and curious, if you are drawn to stories and storytelling (the instruments by which we try to make sense of our lives and the imponderable world around us), you should consider The Beacon. You'll get to help shape the community of which you are a part. You'll get a chance to move outside your comfort zone, to burst your own bubble. You'll question accepted assumptions (a necessary but unsettling process). You'll see your name in print. You'll get to cajole, opine, inform, astonish, entertain, make mistakes and, upon occasion, bore. You will uncover problems, and if you're lucky, solve a few. You will interview and work among fascinating people. You'll learn astonishing facts from erudite experts on arcane subjects of which you know little or nothing. You'll do important work. Perhaps you'll comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Or speak truth to power. Through it all, you might just find out who you are and what you want to do with your life. So if you are interested in telling stories, The Beacon is a place to start, a way to test the waters. You never know: you might end up becoming a long-distance swimmer.
Michael Mulcrone is a professor of communication studies
by Brian Doyle
Ah, spring semester, when sap riseth and students God help me are suddenly wearing shorts and sandals in the icy rain, and finals loom and glower, and frisbee games burst out like cheerful viruses on the quad, and ... student media jobs open up, and applications are due, which is why you will find The Voice in this issue of the glorious and estimable Beacon, and why I write this note to you - yes, you.
Because why are you not thinking about trying for one of these jobs? You're a storycatcher, after all - you're a storyteller, a storycollector, a storylover - your whole life has been a wild series of great stories, yes? Prose, photographs, voices - you love stories in all those forms, don't you? You read like a maniac, and you have pinned more than 400 photographs of every sort and shape on your Facebook page, and you paw through everyone else's photos snorting with glee, and you love the way voices braid and weave in the air and on the page, you love terrific photographs and stories in magazines and newspapers and books and webzines and galleries. Remember that time you pinned up so many photographs in your bedroom at home that your father started barking about how he couldn't see the walls? Remember that?
So why not shoot for a job on The Beacon? The Log? KDUP? I mean, what are you waiting for?
You don't have time?
You'll never have this much time again!
It's not your thing?
Soon you'll be doing hardly anything but your thing, and what pennies you earn for doing your thing will sprint giggling toward the mortgage and the rickshaw, not to mention your college loans.
You don't have any experience?
Sweet mother of the blessed Christ child - do you think anyone in those jobs had any real experience before they took the leap?
Nope - they were curious, and they were willing to take a chance on what might happen, they went for it, and now, even as they are all exhausted and gibbering and wearing sweatpants that haven't been washed since Sarah Palin had a job, they have sweet wild hilarious memories and friends and anecdotes and experiences they will never forget. Are you so sure you don't have the time to take that leap?
Listen - you only have a few years here. They can be astounding, riveting, incredibly challenging years. That's the point of the University of Portland. But this isn't high school. No one tells you what to do. This is the big leagues, and you have to reach for what you might be, find who you will be, try new selves, shoot the moon. Writing pieces for The Beacon - being a disk jockey for KDUP - catching time and story forever in the pages of The Log - heck, why not? And all three media are changing before our eyes, in ways no one can predict, ways that could shape the rest of your life - c'mon, take the leap...
Brian Doyle is the editor of the Portland Magazine
