| Frequent reader,
No one who is currently editing uws story submissions is a UW student.
We are all alumni. I am a grad student at Queen's and the rest of the editors
are working full-time.
A little background on uws might explain what needs to be done to make
it work. A bunch of smart guys started uws back in 1999, partly because they
saw the need for a more interactive media source on campus. Over time,
more people (me, for example), got involved. Too, over time the editorial
standards for front page stories increased. There has been a long-standing
debate between uws editors about the editorial standards for front page
stories: some think only very good "hard news" stories should be published;
others think there is a place for "hard news", secondary reporting (e.g., not-
uws news), announcements from student organizations, etc; and still others
think (or have said) that anything and everything should be posted on the
front page.
The current failure of uws is, in my opinion, not for lack of good ideas
about what should be done. The problem is that the editors of uws did not
recruit new volunteers to take over. With few exceptions, the organization did
not progress past its first generation of volunteers.
To turn back to your question of what needs to be done. If the editorial
standards are fairly low, then not much needs to be done. I think I would
rather shut down the uws news function than see it continue on its current
path. If the editorial standards are to be fairly high (as they once were), then
the amount of work is fairly substantial. Stories need to be assigned, written,
fact-checked and edited. Editors need to work with writers to improve their
interviewing, researching and writing skills. Without a substantial revenue
source, all this work must be done by volunteers. The task is not impossible
(a small team of volunteers made it work for a while), but it is unsustainable
in the medium term.
Alternatively, a large amount of organizational work could be done to lay
the foundation for a new way of operating. A small, time-limited, opt-in
student fee would provide a revenue source that could be used to pay one
person to work on uws full-time (this would make a huge difference in terms
of sustainability). This is something that we should have done while we were
students.
The situation is this: the first generation of uws volunteers have stopped
volunteering and the second generation hasn't started volunteering. If a
second generation takes over and does the substantial work needed to make
uws as good as it was (and, hopefully, much better!), great. If not, then the
first generation might as well just admit failure and turn the thing off.
I suppose that it wouldn't hurt to grant some current students editing
privileges and see what happens. E-mail edit@uwstudent.org if you are still
interested: no editing privileges will be granted to anonymous readers. ---
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