A lot of things happen at a school that don’t get noticed. Sometimes, those things affect a lot of people in profound ways.
One of our goals in the news section of The Poly is to investigate those kinds of things—to uncover the truth about what’s going on at RPI. Of course, there are some obstacles we need to overcome.
The obstacle that has plagued us most in the past has been our small staff. Thanks to some amazing recruiting efforts over the last two semesters and being back in our offices in the Union, that problem has been on its way out. Our staff of regular writers is now five times as big as it was last year, bringing us to a total of five regular writers.
With increased interest in the section, we have refocused our efforts on covering the big stories on campus. We suddenly find ourselves wondering what those stories are. One of the problems with uncovering the truth is knowing where to dig, and as students with other responsibilities and busy schedules, we still don’t have the resources to dig all over campus.
For stories that cover more than press releases and events, we need leads. We get most of our leads through word of mouth, in the form of rumors that make their way to our office through different routes. Sometimes these rumors turn out to be something, and sometimes they’re just rumors. Either way, these types of leads are fairly uncommon.
We need your help.
If you know about something, and you think that more people should know about it, get in touch with us. We welcome the chance to look into an issue and get the information that’s important to the campus community.
Of course, it helps when people can go on record. But if the circumstances put you too close to an issue to be identified, talk to us anyway. We can usually find what we need if we’re just pointed in the right direction.
The important thing is that we get that direction. Without it, we can’t even begin.
