The wildly popular and informative Story of the Press is now available! This beautifully written manual provides a brief but exhilarating biography of The Press’ origins and founders. In addition, it is a comprehensive guideline for all of us newsies, and is quite possibly one of the most important documents ever created! It is available here in PDF format for your viewing pleasure. In case you’re a bit skeptical as to the brilliance of this document, here are a few highlights:
“All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.
-H.L. Mencken, 1919
“In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, Hari Selden is a pyscho-historian who has calculated that the galactic Empire will crumble, communications will break down, and a 30,000-year dark age will follow. So Hari establishes the Foundation, a colony of intellectuals and artists which will preserve knowledge and culture, foster a renaissance, and telescope the dark age down to only 2,000 years’ duration. The Story of the Press: A Manual,along with the Bylaws and The Basics, is the “Foundation” of the Press. It would be silly to believe that the high standard of writing, editing, and awareness (not to mention the great backrubs) will continue unabated at our paper. Turnover is high, senioritis infects and withers training, fools assume power.”
[…]“But like the planchette on an Ouija board, the Press seemed to draw its participants to a predetermined destination; seemed to pull itself together the next week; seemed to get itself to the printers, get printed, distributed, have its cash flow juggled just enough to pay its bills; and it seemed to do that long enough to finally dispel any notions about allowing it to die. The Press lived, and lives still.”
[…]“While modern psychological study is still grappling with Freud’s greatest question, his second greatest enigma looms large: What does a paper want? Well, in the case of the Press, we can quickly unfurrow the bearded Austrian’s brow with a mandate so concise it appears naive: To print feature articles, investigative reports, and incisive analyses, for the purposes of informing the campus community, promoting progress, and inciting debate.”