Media always hate to cover media. We wish we could use this space to inform you.
We want to fill you in on which quarterback will take the lead this season, prep you on higher education’s budget shortfalls and warn you if the decrepit Studio Arts Building will crush you.
But we can’t. Instead, we must use this page to explain how we may disappear without your help.
In the past few months, faculty leaders in LSU Student Media have suggested curtailing the print frequency of The Daily Reveille — even proposing a once-a-week paper or a completely online publication. Leaders blame decreasing advertising revenue as the reason for the cuts, citing numbers with unclear implications.
LSU administrators proposed a premature solution to these problems. And if The Daily Reveille cuts the “daily” from its name, then you don’t just lose a five-day paper.
You lose a 100-year-old institution, your best procrastination tool for long lectures in Dodson Auditorium and a familiar face staring back at you from a battered newspaper rack in the Quad.
You also lose a fighter. Your personal watchdog.
But we don’t just keep tabs on the big guys. We tell the stories no one else will: yours. We cover your knitting clubs, your library hours and your local coffeehouse closures.
There are parts of this campus and the LSU experience you can’t shake. The Daily Reveille is ours, but it should be yours too.
The Daily Reveille first printed in 1887 and continued to do so despite devastating hurricanes and caffeinated all-nighters. No matter the circumstances, this campus could always count on a handful of college journalists to keep students informed.
Our predecessors and proud alumni covered Huey Long’s administration, Kennedy’s assassination and Sept. 11, 2001 — bringing you news, good and bad, the next day in print.
The Daily Reveille has consistently printed five days a week for the past 13 years.
And you help fund it.
Every semester, $18.25 of your student fees go to all branches of LSU Student Media with $4 of those fees partially funding the five-day publication of The Daily Reveille, according to the Office of Budget Planning.
That’s it. That’s all it takes from you to fund one of the best — and one of the only remaining — daily student papers in the country.
This newsroom is as crucial to our learning and professional future as laboratories are to STEM students or the PMAC is for gymnasts.
Whether you pick up The Daily Reveille for sudoku puzzles, sports coverage or to see what band will play at the local bars, everyone can agree: You pay for The Daily Reveille, and it might be pried away without your input.
While The Advocate and Nola.com | The Times Picayune cover the university, The Daily Reveille is the only newspaper in the state made by LSU students, for LSU students.
Who else is going to tell you which renovations Student Government approved for the Student Union? Who else will hold administrators accountable for making policies without student input? Who else will give a voice to the students who need one?
Copies of The Daily Reveille across campus are as synonymous with the culture and history of LSU as the noon chime of the Memorial Tower. You read it now, your grandparents read it then and we hope your kids can read it some day, too.
There may come a day when a daily print newspaper is the wrong answer to the challenges the LSU community faces, but this should be a student-led conversation based on facts, not administrative solutions.
That day is not today.
As long as there are students committed to reporting news and students ready to read it, The Daily Reveille will continue printing as long as we can. We hope students drive the conversation of The Daily Reveille’s digital efforts, purpose as a learning tool and future of its print frequency.
We hope our readers think this is as important as we do.