As per tradition, “The State of the Campus Times” updates readers on our affairs — the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) and Publisher write this pseudo-column at the start and end of every semester to articulate the struggles and joys found through managing your local student-run newspaper. We also introduce ourselves and our projects, what we hope to achieve during our terms, and we provide progress updates regarding past management’s pursuits.
My name is Elena Bachmann, and I am a rising senior studying economics and German. I have been involved with the Campus Times since my freshman fall. My friends and I began as copy editors, and I had dreams of becoming a puzzler (I’ve worked on two crosswords since, not to brag) but the paper had different plans for us. In our second semester, your EIC Maya Brosnick and I were accepted into the fold as News Editors, but after a semester, I knew that the role of Business Manager would be a better fit for me. While Business Manager, I continued to write — for every section but sports — and I enjoy it, but nonetheless rather prefer the administrative side of the paper.
I am succeeding publishers who did amazing work, and I strive to expand upon their visions for the future of our organization. Serving as Business Manager under both Sherene Yang (Publisher ’25) and Micah Bettenhausen (Publisher ’24). I saw the impact the Publisher can have on the CT, and our campus community by extension … and I wanted this role so badly.
When one thinks about CT’s impact on campus — our visibility — one might think of the physical paper we produce every two or three weeks, our newsstands, our corner in the Graphic Arts Suite next to the Pit, the blue baseball caps we wear, or maybe our website.
Having an online presence at www.campustimes.org keeps us relevant and on our toes. We are continually improving and adding to our website, and it has paid off! More people have visited our website than ever before with 828,231 views this year, up from last year’s 684,558 views. We have also seen traffic from a wider variety of people, with 635,023 users over the last year, representing a 50.08% increase from 423,131 distinct users last year. In line with this, we have run more online advertisements and tripled our online advertising capability — we can now run three ads at once!
But this does not mean we are neglecting the physical distribution of the paper. We distribute to 73 locations, have 50 newsstands, and plan to purchase three more in the fall. We also continue to mail issues to those who sign up (and are willing to donate to offset shipping costs) — and if you don’t want to pay, you can always view print PDFs on our website, where we have print archives going back to 2012.
Another way for alums to consume CT content is through our newsletter, The Buzz. After years in the works, this March we sent out our first issue of what we plan to be semesterly updates.
We love our readers, but even more so, we at the CT are always looking for new contributors. Diversity of opinion is important to us — we want to represent varying viewpoints and voices — and we appreciate that there is often more than one angle to a story. A newspaper needs more than just writers to run properly: We’re always looking for photographers, illustrators, and editors!
In the fall we will host an open house in order to draw potential staff, something suggested by Lou Hansen ’89, a CT alum who kindly led a workshop on investigative reporting in March.
But I think that part of recruitment is putting a spotlight on current elected individuals. That’s why we bought our elected staff (section editors, section chiefs, and management) navy shirts with our logo — the press passes and caps weren’t enough.
Another part of recruitment is continuing to build and foster our community. From hosting social events to creating more fun merch (credits to Emily English, one of our managing editors, for the “news paper free” guy), we have done a lot of work this semester to make CT more welcoming and fun.
Though we always have further to go (we’re actively working on fixing problems with our website, including the broken search function), I’m proud of what we have accomplished this year, and am excited for what we have planned for next semester.
