Passion for Print : HEA O.C. College Students Bring Hard-Edged Issues Into Focus in Their Newspapers

Stacy Brown was once flitting aimlessly through the college system on the indefinite-year plan. When she arrived at Saddleback College in 1991 she, like so many others, had a full-time job in addition to her load of courses. Attending class when her work schedule allowed, she got OK grades, but she had no focus.

Two years later, Brown, now 21, joined Saddleback’s newspaper, the Lariat, and had a career epiphany: Now she is on the track of the proud and the few--print journalism.

“It’s just, like, clicked with me,” she says. Even her grades improved, “because I was at school all the time, and I actually went to my classes. I could do my studies instead of worrying about going to work.”

Brown is now the editor in chief of the weekly publication, which was judged one of the top five community college newspapers in the country by the Associated Collegiate Press at its national convention in New Orleans in November. She is filling out applications to complete her education at a four-year school, hoping to become a sort of anthropological travel writer.

“I want to fly to Africa and be with a tribe for a month and come back and write on the tribe and mail it to National Geographic or something,” she says.

The attitude of Brown and other students in Orange County collegiate journalism programs indicates there is a modicum of hope for the future of the print biz despite shrinking budgets--the Lariat nearly folded in 1993 due to a $2.8-million shortfall--and dwindling student interest--of the 886 students in Cal State Fullerton’s communications department who have declared a major sequence (including photojournalism, public relations, advertising and TV/film), only 135 chose print journalism.

While tabloidization is an unsettling trend among the professional ranks, it has yet to trickle into the college population. And it never will, if instructors like CSUF newspaper adviser Jeffrey Brody get through to their students. “As an instructor you teach older values and hopefully instill them into the next generation,” he says. “You can teach them to be good reporters, to be aware.”

For the moment, at least, it seems to be working.

CSUF’s Daily Titan, which also fared well at the Associated Collegiate Press conference--garnering a second-place best of show award--has feverishly pursued such hot-button issues as gays and Latinos with AIDS on campus, highlighted by an informative supplement published last month in opposition to Proposition 187.

“We put a face on the proposition,” says opinion columnist Veronica Gimenez, 22.

Brody praised the supplement as a successful exercise in advocacy journalism. “They really tackled the issue in depth, both in columns and in reported stores. They wrote about the ramifications.”

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Though they may be shrinking in numbers, student journalists still thrive in raking the muck, serving as the university equivalent of the alternative press.

Brody cites the work of Gimenez, who often deals with Latino concerns. “(She) writes with great passion. She has a voice of conscience in her column. How often do you find that?”

When Gimenez began writing her column, she hardly imagined herself as the crusading type; instead, she says she fancied herself a twentysomething Erma Bombeck. “But when you’re 20, you find that more decisive things happen that affect your life rather than funny things,” she says, citing Proposition 187.

The college paper, especially at a commuter school like CSUF, creates and perpetuates a sense of community and identity, she believes. “University papers are essential. It’s the uniting force for all students so they don’t feel isolated. We come from everywhere, and it would be easy to feel lost, go to school, go home, and not be affected by anything. But there are policies that affect them.”

In February, Gimenez will expand her reach to the high school level: She plans on starting a magazine, called Conversation Peace, to help dispel ethnic strife and racism. “I want to educate high school students to different ethnicities,” she says. “Through this magazine, we can provide a forum for students to debunk stereotypes and try to understand each other a little more rather than just complain about problems (among) ethnic groups.”

The good news is that aspiring journalists Gimenez and Brown have that ink-in-the-veins ethos without concern for the relative lack of monetary rewards in their chose profession. The bad news is that this is rare, says Lariat adviser J. Mike Reed.

“People are used to having the easy way out,” Reed says.

“If you enjoy what you’re doing, it doesn’t really matter,” Brown says. “I look at my dad and he makes a lot of money, but he hates his job and doesn’t want to get up in the morning to go.”

At CSUF, the advertising and public relations sequences each have nearly twice as many students as print journalism, and there is an upswing in interest in advertising at Saddleback. “That’s where the money is,” Reed says. “Students are learning that they want to get out there and make some money. So people are telling them the money’s in advertising.”

Not helping matters is the dearth of media jobs. “Salaries are not increasing, and the unemployment rate (among journalists) has been steady,” says Ohio State journalism professor Lee Becker, who has researched enrollment and employment trends in the media. “Students are being forced to pick other options, which I suspect reflects the continued weakness of their employment prospects.”

Still, CSUF adviser Brody says, there are plenty of students for whom the college paper “becomes their life. A lot of them give their heart.”

But the softening of the media, in which analysis is emphasized over serious reporting--”The Titan is turning toward literary journalism,” Gimenez admits--has taken its toll; the hard-core newsy is a dying breed.

“It takes a real special person to understand the importance of doing investigative kinds of stories. There has to be an innate sense of justice,” says Reed. “But I don’t see an overwhelming number of students who want to do the work.”

Of course, going hand in hand with the grand tradition of the quest for justice and the truth is the tweaking of the powers that be, and in college that often means school administrators.

“If you want to teach students to do investigative kinds of news stories and fulfill their role as I perceive it as the Fourth Estate watchdog, you’re not going to have people really happy about the kinds of stories that appear,” Lariat adviser Reed says.

Nor very cooperative, he might have added.

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Reed cites an incident last year in which a girl was blinded in one eye by a stray golf ball from the campus driving range. Although the Los Angeles Times and Register ran stories, a Saddleback College reporter had to file a letter with the administration citing the Freedom of Information Act in order to get details, Reed says. “What really got us mad is after they gave us the runaround, somebody told the L.A. Times the information.”

Ultimately, though, gaining access to investigative resources may be the one way today’s collegiate journalist will have an edge over previous generations. As more journalists move from colleges to magazines and newspapers, they actually may be able to teach the old folks a thing or two, especially about changing technology.

The Daily Titan operates with a state-of-the-art computer system, and professors like Brody are educating students in computer-generated reporting through use of the Internet, Nexus/Lexus and the FoxPro program, which simplifies such time-honored but time-consuming investigative tasks as combing through court records.

“This is how I train students for the future. They may not have Woodward and Bernstein,” says Brody, referring to the Washington Post reporters credited with breaking the Watergate story, “but they have computers.”