For three plus years now I have been working for Monmouth College’s student newspaper, The Courier, and I have loved doing it, well, most of the time that is.

Every year, with good cause, The Courier comes under a fair bit of criticism for the mistakes that appear and the overall problems it contains. However, I believe there is a bigger issue at hand.

That is, we as a staff have no formal training in journalism. We, as a group, are learning as we go; each week is a learning experience for us and each mistake is all part of the greater learning process.

Although it seems that many are and have been pleased with the progress that has been made over the past three years, there is still a body that is calling for higher standards.

I say to them, if this campus requires a professional student newspaper, which seems to me a paradox, that a journalism program should be constructed or, at the very least, a journalism class.

Even our bitter rival, Knox College, has at least a journalism minor. Northern Illinois University has what many define as a top of the line student newspaper. Now, I am not saying that Monmouth should have a program like NIU’s, but we can aspire to fulfill the standards that their paper, The Northern Star, both sets and upholds.

What needs to be addressed with The Courier is not that its staff needs to dedicate themselves anymore than they already have but that the individuals willing to make the commitment to The Courier should have the same commitment from the College. That commitment is training to help them succeed at high standards.

While the college does offer a wide range of writing classes, such as media and public relations writing, offered by the communication and theater arts department, the student newspaper still suffers from a general lack of journalistic knowledge.

By my count, only six members of the Monmouth College staff have any professional experience in the field of journalism. They are, Jeff Rankin, director of college communications; Dan Nolan, assistant director of college communications; Barry McNamara, associate director of college communications/director of news bureau; Tom Withenbury, director of student publications; Chris Goble, lecture in the department of communication and theater arts and Joe Angotti, visiting distinguished professor of communications (if I am forgetting anyone, please forgive me).

As each of these men have indeed had their effect on how I write and participate in the creation of The Courier, the required time that it would take to properly train an entire staff is not manageable to any of their schedules as their responsibilities are heavy.

Some may be saying that Tom Withenbury, The Courier’s advisor, should be training us, but he is our advisor not a trained professor.

The Courier would benefit greatly if there was some kind of training program or class that students could participate in before they were thrown into the lion’s den, that is, being an editor of The Courier.

Now this is not a rant on how hard my job is or how much I loathe it, but it is a rant on how each and every week I begin working on the paper, I feel under qualified and ill-prepared.

I guess the ending hope of Monmouth College is that by the time I spend four years in its halls I will leave, qualified, confident and prepare. Is the current program that surrounds The Courier fulfilling this? As it stands now, certainly not.

The bottom line is, if the faculty, staff, students and community of Monmouth College want to see a high quality, professionally written and edited Courier, then the staff creating it will need to be much better prepared and trained to deal with the demands and responsibilities that come with those standards.

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