Editor’s note: As part of a media transparency initiative, on May 8, 2017, the Collegian spent the last day of publishing of the year telling our readers about us. You can read more about the people behind our publication in the Editor’s Blog.
The Collegian news desk focuses on stories that are important to campus and the Fort Collins community, such as crime, breaking news and issues like rising tuition or U+2.
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The news desk often covers the Fort Collins City Council meetings, the weekly senate meetings for the Associated Students of Colorado State University, breaking news and crime in Fort Collins and events that happen on campus as they occur, like the free speech wall on the Plaza.
Events the desk regularly covers help give the reporters new story ideas to pitch to the news editors during the weekly meetings. By covering the weekly ASCSU Senate meetings, the news desk heard about the mobile food bank introduced on campus this year and was able to write a feature story about the mobile food bank coming to campus. Similarly, by covering Fort Collins City Council, the news desk was able to write multiple stories on the sit-lie ban.
Most of what the news desk covers has an element of timeliness, which means stories are published at the most relevant time. Stories such as crime or breaking news are published as soon as possible, whereas feature stories on students or faculty members do not have to be published as soon as they are finished but are published when they are most newsworthy.
The Collegian news desk plans to have reporters work on longer, investigative stories in addition to regular news coverage to challenge reporters writing for the news desk.
Journalists, and news reporters especially, are taught to write without bias. The news desk works to ensure both sides of an issue or story are heard in the articles where having both viewpoints is necessary for the story and for its readers. This does not mean news reporters as people do not hold their own biases, but that their stories aim to be as unbiased as possible. For example, the article about the on-campus meat harvesting facility did not contain the reporter’s opinion about those protesting the facility or what they themselves thought of the facility.
If you’re interested in writing for the news desk or have a story idea you would like us to cover, please contact us at news@collegian.com.
Collegian news editors Haley Candelario and Rachel Telljohn can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @H_Candelario98 and @racheltelljohn.
