Community First, “News” Second

Leon Hu ‘29

Opinion Editor

At the onset of my freshman year last fall, I had decided to take a chance and start writing for the Tripod. Why not, I thought? I was pretty good at writing (at least, so I liked to believe), and I thought it would be a rewarding experience. The Tripod looked stunning: weekly publications with a fancy logo up top, full-page advertisements, a wealth of sections to write for and a full-fledged team of editors to subject all incoming pieces to the closest scrutiny. It felt like an integrated community of people who celebrated exactly that: a community of writers dedicated to enshrining the history of Trinity College. By the time I was promoted to Opinion Editor at the end of the fall semester, I felt proud to be a part of the Tripod. 

I cannot say the same anymore. On Jan. 23, we lost a member of our community. This should have been a moment of collective grief and healing for everyone affected — meaning every single person on campus. Despite this, two of my senior editors decided to write an insensitive and, frankly, disgusting article capitalizing on a moment that should have been as detached from exploitative journalism as possible. The justification provided the next day failed to address the main issue: the act of sharing information took priority over the respect and dignity to cherish the memory of one of our own. 

This is not who we should be. In fact, this is not who we are. The very first issue of the Tripod states, in bold text in the front, that one of the core missions of our paper is “to endeavor in every possible manner to increase TRINITY SPIRIT.” What part of writing an emotionless article about a death in the community speaks to increase campus spirit? The very essence of the Tripod is to maintain connection on campus and a soul that speaks to the heart of our students, faculty, staff and alumni. Every part of that article runs contrary to the goals of the paper. Little new information was communicated, and people throughout our community both on and off-campus agreed that it was absolutely disrespectful to even conceive of writing an article in this fashion about the topics at hand. 

Yet, the pressing issue remains that it happened, that people were hurt by it and, most importantly, that it was able to happen. Despite our ideals, the system and methods we had in place to govern the Tripod as an organization enabled widespread pain to harm people throughout the community. As a member of the Tripod, I also hold responsibility for what happened. 

We need to change. Now, the question becomes: how?

There are differing opinions on how to do this.  To me, it starts with scope: we should drastically redefine the goals of the Tripod. Throughout the history of the paper, the Trinity community has debated what the Tripod should be. Up until this moment, our focus had become centered around the dissemination of information on campus. Generally, this works as a principle, yet we need to remember that this is not the main purpose of the Tripod. In the event of truly breaking news, administrative emails and external news outlets have much better resources and methods for reporting on news that the community must hear.

Conversely, although we remain a newspaper, we are still just a college newspaper. We are not the New York Times. We also do not belong to an institution with massive cultural impact, like the Harvard Crimson or the Yale Daily News. We belong to a small-college paper that was created to foster a sense of community within the college community. For non-breaking stories, reporting on campus happenings works towards this purpose. Learning about seniors with fascinating stories, unspoken heroes in our staff or new events hosted on campus all serve to commemorate what the feeling of being included on campus is. Consequently, the Tripod works best as a de facto archive of campus happenings, good or bad. 

Truly breaking news does not serve this purpose. First, in the case of genuine tragedies, no campus community is fostered by simply reporting what happens with little emotion or connection from the loss to other people throughout the Trinity network. There is room for more meaningful memorialization of loss beyond mere reporting. Second, we are a primarily weekly newspaper with incredibly limited resources. We cannot realistically get articles out as soon as possible unless corners are cut, such as releasing articles without having multiple editors look at it. Third, there are other sources of information that people turn to if they want actual news reporting on campus. People usually do not open the Tripod on Tuesdays to learn about immediate, pressing issues that threaten life on campus. 

Our focus should never be on breaking news in the first place. Our actual focus should be on community, and community first. We should be less of a newspaper and more of a community paper. We do not exclusively publish articles by trained journalists or skilled rhetoricians. We accept articles from many parts of the current student body — not just journalists. The goal is to give Trinity students a platform to express what they feel, not to create detached, impersonal reporting on campus reportings. 

Most importantly, our articles should embody the “TRINITY SPIRIT” that marked the genesis of the Trinity Tripod. We are a community paper. We should platform community voices, and we should enable those voices to speak as they truly are. Regardless of the section, the topic choices, people represented, and stylistic choices should represent the numerous idiosyncrasies that collectively form the fabric of what we know as Trinity. There is a time and place for everything. Objectivity and journalistic norms apply, but just like the scope of the paper, they have limits.  We should remember that the Tripod does not have the scope to report properly on truly breaking news as a small college newspaper with limited resources and a focus on representing the community. We certainly have no room for disgracing the memory of a cherished Bantam who left too soon. This is not what the writers and editors of the Tripod joined for; this is not what everyone at Trinity came here to do. We came here to create a community — it’s time to start acting like it.