By 
Carroll College has a tight-knit community that genuinely cares about each other. But it still makes me ask if anyone in that community reads The Prospector?
As a campus, we have friends and classmates who work hard to write these stories.
Long before my time at Carroll, the student newspaper was a place for students to find campus news and events. With the new digital age and constant online media consumption, I question if anyone finds campus news in our student newspaper.
Ironically, I am writing this editorial for The Prospector. So, will anyone on campus read this?
Every week, our student body floods with information about campus.
We get a weekly newsletter from President Cech, the Halo Happenings, and we have a fantastic and consistent social media presence on campus.
At times, students can feel too bombarded with information.
“I definitely feel overwhelmed with weekly newsletters and social media posts,” said Reagan Paris, a senior education major from Billings. “I wish there would be some proofreading before emails go out – it feels like Carroll administration doesn’t take the time to send out the correct information.”
The student newspaper drops once a month. By the time it comes out, we’ve seen newsletters and tons of social media posts informing students in real time about what has happened.
The slow death of print journalism is not a surprise, however. Local papers around the nation are closing down left and right. I’ve seen it back home in Southern Oregon – a local paper called the Medford Tribune shut down last year.
Almost all newspaper publications are digital nowadays. The Prospector made the switch, too, before the 2022-2023 school year.
As a staff writer, I wrote international profiles about students from Malawi, Japan, Ukraine, and Norway. It was amazing to watch those students share their Carroll stories with friends and family back home.
Having a digital publication meant those students could send those stories internationally.
Families in Lebanon, may read the paper, but what about on campus? We no longer have physical copies of our student newspaper.
I think we need both digital and print editions of The Prospector.
“I never read the paper – I don’t even know where to find it,” said Jack England, junior health sciences major from Meridan, Idaho. “If I saw a paper version sitting around, I’d be more likely to pick up.”
The Prospector is fighting a digital battle for attention with nonstop social media posts and weekly emails. They are inescapable and a battle the paper will never win. Social media is instant, and those emails are unavoidable.
“I have no idea when the student newspaper comes out,” said Johnny Goodman, a senior elementary education major from Newport, Washington. “I usually get my campus information through the tons of emails they send out every week.”
As an editor of The Prospector, we need to change our approach.
Digital is okay – paper copies are okay. We need to reach out to the Carroll community, not wait for them to come find us online.
