I’ve heard it a million times. “I hate The Spectator because they spelled my name wrong.” “I will never talk to The Spectator for a story. They can’t even spell Haas correctly.” “The only thing worth reading the in The Spectator is the Police Blotter.” “No one on The Spectator can write.”

Flipping through the pages of our paper, you won’t find us claiming to be perfect, or a professional publication.

What you will find are the words “100 percent student produced,” that we strive for perfection and that we allow our mistakes to be made public, both in the corrections section and in letters to the editor.

Today, the media constantly faces scrutiny from its readers, and unfortunately, society’s trust of journalism is on the decline. But at the collegiate level, we’re still able to talk with our readers, find out what they want to see and make improvements to our paper.

We have the opportunity to make some great changes based on what stories you want to see. Give us that chance. If you know of an event coming up that would interest students, let us know. If you have a friend with an incredible life story, stop in and tell us about it.

Our goal always has and always will be to serve the students of UW-Eau Claire to the best of our abilities. With that said, our abilities have a wide range. This semester we are welcoming a very new, very young staff to the paper. Some of our staffers have had years of experience in journalism and some haven’t had any.

The Spectator in many ways serves as more of a 40-hour-a-week course than an after-school activity. Many of us joke that we should sleep in Hibbard Hall because we’re there so much every day.

We work really hard, and sometimes we make mistakes, but that is part of the process. We are learning with every 3 a.m deadline we finish and every issue we put out. And we are proud of the work we do.

Every staff that passes through the doors of 108 Hibbard has the same goals and intentions: to tell our readers the news in a balanced, accurate and, whenever possible, entertaining way.

We make every effort to print the stories that are the most important to students based on the principles of news value, whether they care about the issues or not. But we are students too. We have exams, papers and lectures to juggle between working on the paper. And some of our insomniac staffers even choose to work additional jobs beyond the paper.

We put a lot of time into this job because we want to be a responsible, reliable news source for our readers.

This is your newspaper and we want to hear what you have to think, but we can’t do much with feedback like, “Get better writers,” or “More crossword puzzles.” We need and are constantly seeking constructive criticism. Because this is such a great place for writers to learn, we want to give every writer that opportunity.

But journalism is a different kind of writing than the writing you would turn in for an English paper.

When journalists write news stories – not editorials – their goal is to tell the story and help the reader understand what is going on without adding in any opinion or bias.
All of our principles find their roots in real journalistic principles, as practiced both in the classroom and in the professional world.

Sometimes we do a great job of this, and sometimes we struggle. But just because we need to correct ourselves from time to time, does that mean the paper deserves to be unfairly scrutinized forever?

Just imagine handing in an assignment that you really worked hard on, but because you made a mistake, the professor decides to shun you for the rest of the semester. Is that fair?

This is your paper, so tell us what you want to see. Give us some criticism we can work with. Tell us when we screw up. Make this your paper.

If you’re still not convinced and think you can do a better job, our freelancer meeting will be in February. We’ll see you there.