Activist Gives a Student Perspective on the News: Ben Rigney Reflects

Every college is unique, and that is especially true for UC Blue Ash. One of the things that remains most prevalent on campus is the distance from school and student.

Most colleges have a very close bond to their students but because of UCBA’s size and nature this is not the case. The school features every student commuting from somewhere, whether it’s from apartments, UC Clifton, or from their parents’ house.

With this being said, the Activist has a limited role on this campus. I know for a fact that a large percentage of teachers read the Activist but only a limited few students read it. I think on this campus the Activist is not necessarily a news feed (yet) but more or less an opportunity for students, like myself, to develop our journalistic skill. 

It gives me a chance to write, even with a limited market. For me personally, it means a lot to be a part of making a newspaper. It is an exciting field and I think it is amazing to see a good newspaper come together. I love being able to write for a paper and tell the news or tell someone’s story in my own way. Whether it is a teacher’s profile or an opinion piece about current events, I think it is exciting to be a part of such a industry. 

For UC Blue Ash to have a paper is important. It is different than other papers with wider circulation (school papers), because it is about teaching students how to write as well as giving the student body a chance to hear the news from a student’s perspective. It gives us as writers taking the class an opportunity to voice our opinion in matters involving the school as well as giving us a chance to work on our skills attempting to become published journalists.

I enjoy following news stories or even breaking the news for a small campus like UCBA. Even though we rarely break the news, we get the opportunity to share our own opinions on current events around the campus. 

Journalism in our society is a constant changing industry and today it is about quick and accurate news meant to break stories and events. Journalism is meant to tell the public what they have a right to know, whether it is about police corruption or the local farmers market’s opening day. The news is something everyone has a right to be able to get ahold of, so journalism is meant to tell the public what they should know.

Writing for the Activist gives us as students the an opportunity to either break the campus news or to simply give our perspectives on the news. So we are not necessarily telling people what they don’t already know but simply telling the stories in slightly different ways. 

The school paper gives me the opportunity to write for a published material. It gives me the power to pick my stories and write articles based around things I am fascinated in. Most classes are about learning a material and attempting to create around that. This class is hands on and gives me the attempt to write on my own and hear feedback.

For example, I recently wrote a profile on a professor who received honors for her photography career. “UCBA Now” already broke the story, but my piece focuses on telling her story in a much more simple profile, instead of showing the news, I focused on telling her personal story.

So the Activist is journalism because we as students have a voice within the campus and we as students have a chance to read other students’ ideas about current events. 

This is not my farewell to the Activist as a whole because I am not leaving. Next semester, I will be taking News Workshop II. But I would like to say that this semester has taught me a lot about journalism and how to write better stories. In the past I had to really work on my writing and had a hard time finding news stories to write about. This semester, I found it easier and had a much better time writing news and developing my own ideas and stories to write about.

To the readers I would like to say thank you for reading my material and that I hope they can “tune in” next semester.