The Backpage Podcast (Final Podcast)

Wel­come to the Back­page Podcast

This is your source for why stu­dent jour­nal­ism is still so impor­tant to today’s soci­ety. Host­ed by UConn stu­dent Evan Rodriguez, the Back­page pod­cast looks to fea­ture one of the over 1,500 stu­dent news­pa­pers across the nation. One rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the orga­ni­za­tion will be able to talk with Rodriguez about the impor­tance of stu­dent jour­nal­ism and what they’ve been able to accom­plish at their prospec­tive schools.

 

Episode One: The Dai­ly Campus

Episode Audio:

 

Social Media Promotion:

Tran­script:

Intro: In the many sto­ries that you see on a dai­ly basis, it takes hours to craft them. Behind those sto­ries are peo­ple. Many of those peo­ple get their start across one of the over 1,000 stu­dent news­pa­pers across the nation.

But why is that impor­tant to our soci­ety. Well, I’m here to show you. Wel­come, my name is Evan Rodriguez and I’m a cur­rent stu­dent jour­nal­ist that high­lights one of the many stu­dent-run orga­ni­za­tions across the nation to show the impor­tance of stu­dent jour­nal­ism. Today, I’m high­light­ing the Dai­ly Cam­pus, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut’s stu­dent newspaper.

So sit back, relax, grab your favorite cup of cof­fee and enjoy.

Evan: What’s hap­pen­ing every­body? I’m so pleased to bring every­one the first episode of the Back­page pod­cast, where we dis­cuss the impact of stu­dent jour­nal­ism nation­wide. I think it’s impor­tant to start with more than just a name intro­duc­tion from myself for the first episode, so I’m going to give you guys a brief on some of my credentials. 

I’m cur­rent­ly a senior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut study­ing jour­nal­ism and minor­ing in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. As far as what I’ve been able to do through­out my four years at UConn, it’s been a wild ride. Cur­rent­ly, I’m the Asso­ciate Sports Edi­tor of UConn’s Dai­ly Cam­pus news­pa­per. This is my first year doing that and it’s been super spe­cial. Shoutout to my guy Strat­ton Stave, who’s the pri­ma­ry sports edi­tor at the DC. 

But enough about me. It’s impor­tant that we dive into the main sub­ject of this pod­cast and that’s the impor­tance of stu­dent jour­nal­ism in Amer­i­ca. Now, a lot of peo­ple don’t need a quick Google search to know that jour­nal­ism does get a bad rep right? Some peo­ple might think they’re arro­gant, they ask the wrong ques­tions and most impor­tant­ly, they can’t be trusted. 

And I think that’s a real­ly good lead in as to why stu­dent jour­nal­ism is so impor­tant to our soci­ety. In doing some research for this first episode, I stum­bled upon an arti­cle from Octo­ber from the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that dis­cussed some of the work that stu­dent jour­nal­ists have done across dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ties, and man, it’s some excep­tion­al stuff. Stu­dent jour­nal­ists have dis­cov­ered stuff like North­west­ern fir­ing their foot­ball coach due to some haz­ing alle­ga­tions or Stanford’s stu­dent news­pa­per com­plet­ing inves­ti­ga­tions that led to their pres­i­dent resigning. 

For me per­son­al­ly, to hear stu­dent news­pa­pers mak­ing an impact in the sports indus­try is real­ly incred­i­ble. As stu­dent jour­nal­ists, I per­son­al­ly feel that there’s many peo­ple in sports that dis­count our con­tri­bu­tion, and sto­ries like that show that you real­ly can do what your mind to. 

Even dis­cussing some of these top­ics first­hand, I feel that if you put stu­dents in the posi­tion to learn about how to do stuff the right way, that’s so impor­tant in mak­ing sure that they’re going to be great jour­nal­ists. You have to teach peo­ple to seek the truth and report it. This is some­thing that I’ve per­son­al­ly dis­cussed in my role at the Dai­ly Cam­pus. I’m mak­ing sure that we look to pro­duce eth­i­cal con­tent that they all should be proud of.

Beyond just the rea­sons I’m talk­ing about here, one of the rea­sons I want­ed to make this pod­cast was to shine a light on edi­tors across the nation who real­ly put the time and effort into mak­ing their orga­ni­za­tions the best that they can be. At the Dai­ly Cam­pus specif­i­cal­ly, I was able to sit down with 2 amaz­ing peo­ple. The first per­son I inter­viewed was Mad­die Pap­cun, who’s the cur­rent edi­tor-in-chief of the Dai­ly Cam­pus. We dis­cussed her jour­ney to this posi­tion, her role at the DC and her thoughts on the impor­tance of stu­dent journalism.

 

Mad­die Interview:

Mad­die:

I think the way that I approached Opin­ion Edi­tor was try­ing to just be open to, you know, the opin­ion sec­tion is sup­posed to be an open place for any­body’s opin­ion or any ideas whether or not I myself am the co-edi­tor of the opin­ion sec­tion agreed with it or not. We were wel­com­ing and open to it and like let­ting writ­ers take chances and the arti­cles that they wrote, I found that that to me was very impor­tant last year in like just diver­si­fy­ing the opin­ion sec­tion over­all and mak­ing sure that the sec­tion had like a broad range of ideas com­ing out of it. And then in the edi­tor-in-chief role this year, I’ve tak­en that in let­ting the sec­tion edi­tors run the sec­tions how they would pre­fer to, and let­ting them work through the issues that they’re hav­ing, you know, being there as a sup­port sys­tem if they need it or offer­ing to help, but always let­ting them ask for the help before I just jump in and do some­thing for them so that they have auton­o­my over their sec­tion in that role.

Evan: Gotcha. Yeah. Could you dis­cuss maybe the com­mu­ni­ty aspect of the paper and why it’s such an impor­tant part of why it thrives today?

Mad­die: Yeah. So I think the first part about com­mu­ni­ty at the dai­ly camp is just every­body that works here is rel­a­tive­ly friends and just knows each oth­er. You get to know peo­ple’s nich­es and what they like to write about, what they like to talk about. I hope you felt this in like our edi­tor’s meet­ings this year. It’s a fun it’s a manda­to­ry meet­ing where we, like, go over the con­tent for the week, but it also is fun and peo­ple laugh and joke because we do our ice­break­er every week. And I think that that it makes it feel like not work. It’s fun. And that is what is one of the biggest aspects of com­mu­ni­ty at the Dai­ly Cam­pus where, yes, we’re work­ing and we’re putting out a prod­uct five days a week, which is an incred­i­ble under­tak­ing, but we are hav­ing fun while we’re doing it, and that’s like the biggest com­mu­ni­ty aspect.

Evan: Yeah, I find it inter­est­ing that you talked about mak­ing it feel like it’s it’s not work. Could you dis­cuss sort of the impor­tance of, of that just mak­ing stu­dent jour­nal­ism feel more like, you know, an out­let for, for peo­ple to dis­cuss what they want and not be in a bub­ble in a way?

Mad­die: Yeah. Some­thing that I’ve noticed as a stu­dent jour­nal­ist myself and also just like fol­low­ing oth­er stu­dent jour­nal­ists, see­ing what they’re doing, there’s a lot of pres­sure on stu­dent jour­nal­ism, whether it be from peo­ple in the pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ism indus­try or what have you, on what we should be doing, what we’re doing wrong. I’ve found it to be a very crit­i­cal envi­ron­ment, but I per­ceive it as a place of learn­ing and a place of, you know, it does­n’t mat­ter what you’re inter­est­ed in. There is a spot, you know, at the desk even for you. And so when you like, open your­self up to being a place where peo­ple can learn rather than need­ing to be per­fect, even though you’re prob­a­bly 19 and you’ve nev­er real­ly worked pro­fes­sion­al­ly before, being that place of learn­ing instead of like a very harsh, crit­i­cal place where it’s, you know, if your sto­ry is not in on time one week, you do not write the next week, you open your­self up to more oppor­tu­ni­ty, to more voic­es, to more stu­dents. So in think­ing of the Dai­ly Cam­pus and just stu­dent and jour­nal­ism in gen­er­al as a place to learn where it’s still seri­ous and we’re putting out like a seri­ous prod­uct every sin­gle day. But we give peo­ple like the space and the room to grow and to, you know, per­haps do bet­ter on the next one. But not being upset at the first one that came out, that is where you, I guess, see the best in peo­ple in that you give room for them to grow. And then also you like just bet­ter pre­pare them for even if it’s not a jour­nal­ism career life out­side of college.

Evan: Total­ly. So my last ques­tion for you today. In 2023, why do you think stu­dent jour­nal­ism is so impor­tant not only to this uni­ver­si­ty or to stu­dents, but to our soci­ety as a whole?

Mad­die: Yeah. So that, again, is sim­i­lar to just need­ing to have a space to learn. Stu­dent jour­nal­ism is one of the per­fect places for that in that you don’t need to be want­i­ng to go into a long jour­nal­ism career to learn some­thing here. And addi­tion­al­ly, just jour­nal­ism in gen­er­al is very impor­tant, and pub­lic trust in jour­nal­ism is no low and has been for years. So if you can start peo­ple ear­ly and under­stand­ing what jour­nal­ism actu­al­ly is and how it func­tions in our democ­ra­cy, then that would be, I mean, one of the most impor­tant func­tions of any aspect of journalism.

Evan: Total­ly. And that’s all the ques­tions I have for today. I’m so appre­cia­tive of you com­ing on the show, and I wish you the best of luck toward the end of the semester.

Mad­die: Of course. Thank you, Evan.

Evan: Once again, that was Mad­die Pap­cun, who dis­cussed a ton of real­ly impor­tant things about the Dai­ly Cam­pus and stu­dent journalism. 

Evan: The thing that I felt stuck out with Maddie’s inter­view specif­i­cal­ly was this sense of com­mu­ni­ty with­in the news­pa­per and I think that’s so impor­tant in cul­ti­vat­ing this love for writ­ing in the future. Sure, you may not end up stick­ing with jour­nal­ism after col­lege but just know­ing that there might be a kid that’s in the room or with­in your orga­ni­za­tion that might want to have a career in that makes it more impor­tant for the com­mu­ni­ty aspect of journalism. 

Evan: Unlike what some peo­ple may think, jour­nal­ism isn’t this strict pro­fes­sion where peo­ple just sit at a com­put­er with no per­son­al­i­ty. In the indus­try, you meet some real­ly amaz­ing peo­ple that could be friends for life and to hear how that starts at the DC is just awe­some to hear.

Evan: For my sec­ond inter­view, I sat down with Raquel Mon­telin­do, who is the cur­rent man­ag­ing edi­tor of the Dai­ly Cam­pus. She dis­cussed her own jour­ney from San Fran­cis­co to Con­necti­cut and how stu­dent jour­nal­ism can be ben­e­fi­cial to her as an edu­ca­tion major.

Raquel Inter­view:

Raquel: First. So you’re from San Fran­cis­co. So I’ve got to ask, why did you come all the way to UConn and why did you decide to join the Dai­ly Cam­pus of all organizations?

Raquel: Okay. So fun sto­ry. A lot of my fam­i­ly’s from the East Coast and UConn gave me a mas­sive schol­ar­ship to come. So I was like, I have fam­i­ly here. It’s cheap­er. Why not? The Dai­ly cam­pus. I did­n’t actu­al­ly join until I was a junior, so last year, but I start­ed as a design­er, so fair­ly low down on the totem pole, so to speak. And then I end­ed up being man­ag­ing edi­tor, which is kind of insane to think about, and I’m still kind of sur­prised about it today. I was almost a jour­nal­ism major. I did jour­nal­ism all in high school. I was man­ag­ing edi­tor of a high school paper and I just love doing it. And it’s such a fun thing for me to do. And it’s so dif­fer­ent from my media that I love to just be involved at the DC and it’s a dif­fer­ent thing for me to do.

Evan: Awe­some. Yeah, I was going to say so, could you dis­cuss your role at the DC and your favorite part about actu­al­ly being to work here and with every­one here, you know, with it being such a com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven organization?

Raquel: Yeah, def­i­nite­ly. I think my favorite part of the role is just get­ting to come in for pro­duc­tion and over­see it and get to know like all of the dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion work­ers, oth­er design­ers, copy edi­tors, a lot of them have either become my real­ly good friends or they’re peo­ple I’ve met pre­vi­ous­ly. And then it’s like, you work here now, too? Like get­ting to know them on a dif­fer­ent lev­el. And until they find like Char­lotte or Dig­i­tal edi­tor I met sopho­more year before get­ting involved at the DC at all. I came in my first shift and I was like, my God, Char­lotte, Hi! Like it was kind of ran­dom, but the peo­ple here gen­uine­ly are some of the best peo­ple I’ve met at UConn. I real­ly enjoy work­ing with all of them and the com­mu­ni­ty we’ve estab­lished here, it’s just an amaz­ing thing to be a part of and we’re all so moti­vat­ed and proud to pro­duce a paper and hav­ing that cama­raderie togeth­er is just amaz­ing and some­thing I’m so thank­ful to be a part of.

Evan: So Char­lotte nev­er told you any­thing about the DC or rec­om­mend­ing any­thing, so you sort of just joined on your own?

Raquel: I total­ly joined on my own. I met Hol­ly in my sopho­more year, one of the pre­vi­ous life edi­tors, and I want­ed to get involved ear­li­er on, but I lived in North Cam­pus and walk­ing to D.C. for the Sun­day meet­ings just like nev­er seemed to hap­pen. And then I even­tu­al­ly reached out to Sam Zelin, the for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor, about news edi­tor. I applied like as an out­side hire, did­n’t get it. But in my inter­view, I men­tioned lov­ing design work and Sam was like, you should apply to be a design­er. So I did that. But like Char­lotte nev­er men­tioned any of it. I walk in my first prac­tice here, I’m like, Hey, but just work­ing, like get­ting involved and meet­ing peo­ple and like recon­nect­ing with peo­ple that I already met at the DC has just been an awe­some thing to be a part of and I’m just so glad I’ve got­ten to do it.

Evan: I was won­der­ing, so basi­cal­ly if you could make, you know, your pitch to a prospec­tive stu­dent who maybe wants to get involved and would real­ly find an out­let like the Dai­ly cam­pus use­ful, what would you say to that?

Raquel: Show up. Hon­est­ly, just show up. And I know it’s nerve-wrack­ing to like join any new orga­ni­za­tion. I was def­i­nite­ly super ner­vous. My first shift, I could­n’t find the door. You have to go up like the creepy stairs and like I even­tu­al­ly like Slack Chan­nel, the asso­ciate man­ag­ing edi­tor at the time, and I was like, Hey, I can’t find the build­ing. Like, how do we get in? And like, join­ing any doing any new thing is nerve-rack­ing. I moved across the coun­try for col­lege. Nobody from my high school goes here. I knew nobody 15-year-old me would have like lost her mind if I was like, yeah, I just like moved across the coun­try for col­lege, but gen­uine­ly just show­ing up, com­ing in. Every­one here is like the nicest peo­ple. They’re so friend­ly. You won’t be alone if you have no jour­nal­ism expe­ri­ence at all. That’s total­ly fine. We teach you every­thing. You don’t have to be a jour­nal­ism major to get in love. That’s my favorite thing to say because like, I’m an edu­ca­tion major and I’m man­ag­ing edi­tor, so you def­i­nite­ly don’t have to be a jour­nal­ism major to be involved in any way. And I think that’s real­ly awe­some that we’re so, like, inclu­sive and like wel­com­ing to every­one in the UConn community.

Evan: I was going to say. So one of the big­ger myths about writ­ing for a stu­dent news­pa­per is that you real­ly have to be a drill is a major, but the dai­ly cam­pus has so many dif­fer­ent majors. For exam­ple, you’re an edu­ca­tion major. Could you talk about how you’ve made the dai­ly cam­pus such a wel­com­ing envi­ron­ment for all majors and stu­dents? I think it would be real­ly use­ful to have your per­spec­tive on that.

Raquel: Yeah, of course. I’ve like recruit­ed peo­ple from my own major. One of our dig­i­tal pro­duc­ers is some­body who’s like with­in my lit­tle cohort and I’ve got­ten peo­ple involved, like friends from across cam­pus. I’ve been like, Hey, it does­n’t mat­ter if you’re a jour­nal­ism major, It does­n’t mat­ter if you have any expe­ri­ence with writ­ing or design or copy­edit­ing or any­thing. We teach you every­thing. You don’t need to have any pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence. But I think peo­ple like hear­ing such like me talk about how amaz­ing my expe­ri­ence was in get­ting here and get­ting to meet all these peo­ple like Zach Bor­der, some of my best friends at UConn, which like I prob­a­bly could have said that, you know, a cou­ple of months ago. But we’ve gone through a lot togeth­er and we’ve done so much that like all the peo­ple at the U.S., I’m hap­py to say, are like my real­ly good friends and peo­ple that I just love to work with and love to be around. And I would encour­age any­one to come in and I’m sure they’ll find the same expe­ri­ence I did.

Evan: Awe­some. Yeah. So we are approach­ing the end of the fall semes­ter and there’s been so many sto­ries that the DC has been able to pub­lish. Has there been one sto­ry for you that real­ly stood out amongst the many?

Raquel: It’s so hard. There’s so many.

Evan: I know, but I got to know.

Raquel: You’ve got to know? I def­i­nite­ly have loved the amount of cam­pus events we’ve high­light­ed and like stu­dent activism we’ve been high­light­ing. We cov­ered Maria EIC cov­ered what it is like, the radio sta­tions, con­certs we’ve cov­ered with oth­er writ­ers, cov­er events done by oth­er two or three orgs. We wrote about the prom and cov­ered, unfor­tu­nate­ly, our trag­ic loss, all of which I’m still very upset about, and hope­ful­ly we’ll come back and win in the future. But also the amount of work we’ve been doing, cov­er­ing like fos­sil fuel for UConn and the Israel-Pales­tine cri­sis, I’m real­ly proud of just the amount of inves­tiga­tive work we’ve done and just mak­ing sure we’re cov­er­ing every­thing. You can’t stu­dents real­ly care about. And we’ve seen that in the respons­es we’ve got­ten. Peo­ple have reached out and said like, I love that you’re cov­er­ing this. I appre­ci­ate you tak­ing the time to look into things that we care about and real­ly, that’s what the DC is all about, where stu­dent-run, we pro­duce things for the stu­dents and it’s by stu­dents, which I think is just amaz­ing and some­thing I’m real­ly hap­py to con­tin­ue into the spring semester.

Evan: Yeah, that’s so awe­some to hear. So my final ques­tion here in 2023, why do you think stu­dent jour­nal­ism is still so impor­tant to our society?

Raquel: and the his­to­ry edu­ca­tion Read­er So learn­ing a big part of what I do is teach­ing stu­dents to like the activist and like fight for them­selves and stand up for them­selves. And I think stu­dent jour­nal­ism is a real­ly great avenue for that. I think the also the great thing about stu­dent jour­nal­ism is you do not have to be a jour­nal­ism major. You do not have to be a jour­nal­ist going for­ward. You can do it in high school, you can do it in col­lege. I did it in both. I’m going on to be a teacher and I know it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing I’m going to empha­size to my stu­dents that I have in the future, being like, Hey, you can get involved with high school news­pa­per. You can get involved with the col­lege news­pa­per or some sort of pro­gram, because I think it teach­es so many stu­dents like the skills to be inde­pen­dent and be inves­tiga­tive and just like explore things and look into things and like cre­ate their own opin­ions. And I think that’s one of the most impor­tant skills a per­son can have like today.

Evan: That was Raquel Mon­telin­do, man­ag­ing edi­tor at the DC. 

Evan: In the clos­ing sec­tion of this pod­cast, I want­ed to dis­cuss the rea­son for the name of the Back Page pod­cast. Once again in the research phase for this first episode, I was think­ing of what to name this pod­cast and then I thought about who I am. As I said ear­li­er, I am a sports guy and while this pod­cast isn’t about sports, you’ve got­ta think about what you have to do to get to the back page of a newspaper. 

Evan: Sure, you could flip it over straight to the sports sec­tion. Or, you could read through the entire paper to get to the back page and that was the inten­tion of many papers when putting the sports page at the very end, rather than the beginning. 

Evan: To know the entire sto­ry, it helps to know each part. With this pod­cast, I hope to real­ly show­case that through these inter­views and episodes every week.

Evan: Long sto­ry short though, that’s going to do it for this one. Short episode for the first pod­cast, but I real­ly hope you enjoyed. Please make sure to share with all your friends across social media and tune in next time for anoth­er episode of the Back­page Pod­cast. Peace out guys.

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Research:
1. https://apnews.com/article/college-journalism-students-investigations-e3239c974fee6455f36d5a0564049f54

2. https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

3. https://www.theechonews.com/article/2023/09/student-newspapers-offer-value#:~:text=Campus%20newspapers%3A%20They%20are%20organized,is%20just%20one%20of%20those.