Congratulations to the staff, donors, and Board of Directors of The Observer at Boston College for delivering a stunning turnaround in order to come in second place for this year’s Collegiate Network Newspaper of the Year award. While the executive staff certainly deserves credit for giving the newspaper a chance to succeed by placing the right people in the right positions, a majority of the credit must be given to the staff writers and section heads. These amazing students fill the newspaper with well researched stories, interesting feature articles, and club profiles. The countless hours that these individuals have put into The Observer have resulted in an incredible improvement over a span of just two years.
The donors and The Collegiate Network also deserve significant credit because without the necessary resources, we could not publish our product and our ideas. They have stuck with us through the tough times and the good times, realizing that any college publication will go through high and low points. They have been extremely supportive, and it always seems that they write encouraging letters at just the right time.
Looking over the staff room, you would never know that The Observer was even considered for an award. The staff is far from satisfied, instead emboldened to work harder than ever with the hopes that next year we might be able to bring home first place. They know what needs to be done to take the newspaper one step further, and are certainly working overtime to bring us there as soon as possible.
An administration official recently remarked, “The Observer is certainly a conservative, Catholic newspaper and they make no apologies for that.” While we are proud of our heritage, which embraces the values of Catholicism, personal responsibility, and the Western Tradition, these are aspects that inspire our opinions and Catholic issues sections. We are most proud of our efforts in the realm of news, as this section has improved the most over the past two years. Establishing an alternative, stable, and reliable source of news for the BC community is fundamental to our future success. While we know that the official’s comment was meant to be a compliment, we think it shows how far we have yet to go to shed our image of being solely an opinions or Catholic issues publication. We hope that, going forward, our news writers have a bit of a chip on their shoulder, and that this gives them the motivation to work hard and prove that any publication can achieve greatness through sheer hard work and determination.
