Reeve,

We would like to begin by giving our full-fledged support for all three of the earlier responses to your opinion. We commend each of the writers on their well-founded arguments and the speed with which they responded.

That being said, we feel there are other equally valid reasons why your proposition is misguided. The Torch is committed to the principles of the free market and the merits of healthy competition. In a free society, the mainstream press is responsible for providing a check on the institutions of the establishment. However, there comes a time when the mainstream press must be subjected to the criticism it so often dispenses. This can only occur when there exist alternative media outlets like The Torch, Orbis, Talented Tenth, and The Slant: outlets capable of providing unique and otherwise marginalized viewpoints.

For this reason, and others, your arguments in favor of creating a journalistic monopoly are inherently flawed. Healthy competition breeds higher standards and efficient innovation. The Torch has made increasing its readership a priority in the recent months, and will continue to do so until our goals are met. It is an uphill battle, but one that we do not shy away from. We would urge you to adopt the same attitude towards your recruitment rather than relying on coercion in an attempt to prevent the “siphon(ing) off” of “some of the most talented writers” on campus. Our writers have already expressed their unwillingness to work for a paper that does not provide an effective medium for the depth of material we are trying to disseminate.

It is curious that you fail to mention all of the alternative publications on campus in your opinion piece. The Slant, as well as the newly formed Talented Tenth, fill distinct needs on this campus and are responsible for providing unique content that other papers are not capable of producing. We would ask you, Reeve, why you do not propose to consolidate all of the publications at Vanderbilt, rather than just The Torch and Orbis, for wouldn’t that increase your talent pool by leaps and bounds?

Additionally, we would like to urge you, and all Vanderbilt students, to read our Mission Statement. You suggest our publication is “too committed to partisanship to contribute to Vanderbilt’s intellectual community or fight apathy in a meaningful way.” If emphasizing “individual rights, free markets, and limited government” while offering “news and commentary on politics, culture, and life at Vanderbilt” is partisan, then we would ask you which party supports such a platform, because we would like to sign up.

In conclusion, we feel your assertion that alternative media outlets are “siphon(ing) off talent” is disingenuous and denies the hardworking members of your staff the credit they deserve. By correctly using Orbis as an example of the “quality, talent, and potential contained within Vanderbilt Student Communications,” and ignoring your own staff, you imply that “the first step towards a daily student paper” is contingent not on your own writers’ abilities and talents, but on those of the competition.

We agree with Mike Maio when he says “The student newspaper reflects the university as a whole and I think we all have an interest in it having top-notch content.” Therefore, we ask you to continue your efforts in furthering the voice of Vanderbilt. Just don’t tread on us.

Respectfully,

Elizabeth Ryan, Editor-in-Chief
Douglas Kurdziel, Associate Editor
Luke Bidikov, Staff Writer
Kevin McNish, Staff Writer
Katherine Miller, Staff Writer
Mike Warren, Staff Writer

I'd like to explain my own reasons for contributing to Orbis and my belief that Orbis and The Torch are only valuable as independent publications. I think Reeve's premise that dissolving Orbis and The Torch would cause their talented writers to write for The Hustler fails to take into account what the nature of the quality of the publications is.

I'll freely admit, in spite of being an associate editor and 3-year member of the Orbis staff, I have no passion for journalism. I began to write for Orbis my freshman year because of a passion for exploring, sharing, and complicating progressive perspectives. I have no interest in participating in mainstream media. Writing for a progressive publication that seeks to satiate the desires of a progressive readership elicits a particular quality of writing that could never be achieved in a mainstream publication. The high quality you see in Orbis is as much a testament to the alternative nature of the medium as it is to our talented staff. As I helped recruit new staff members this fall, I noticed similar thinking in those who approached our table at the student media and student organization fairs. Students did not consider writing liberal opinion pieces for The Hustler, and then, after realizing a publication existed solely for that purpose, decide instead to write for Orbis. There is something uniquely appealing about the freedom of writing for a publication which makes no claims to be "The Voice of Vanderbilt" for the students at Orbis and The Torch. Orbis can print a long, thoughtful piece about the end of fear politics without questioning whether the piece will appeal to the general student body. Instead, Orbis can print pieces that appeal to our progressive niche (though, of course, we're always pleased to see moderate and conservative students considering our viewpoints). Our writers choose topics, express viewpoints, and even use styles and tones in their writing that would never be printed in a mainstream outlet.

It's possible that if The Torch and Orbis were combined with The Hustler in the way Mike described, some commentary pieces like those in Orbis could be made to fit into The Hustler's format (though I suspect more controversial, inflammatory pieces would beat out longer, more thoughtful pieces, because of The Hustler's intrinsic pursuit of wide appeal). But the unique freedom and purpose I feel when I write for Orbis would be gone. In this case, context means everything. Everyone writes in different ways and about different things, based on their intended audience and the nature of the publication in which they are writing. Without the diverse array of publications we are lucky enough to have at Vanderbilt, some viewpoints would never be expressed, and some stories would never be told.

Mike your comments definitely echoed everything I would have said had I been the first to post. Kudos for your insight. It is asinine to include the Torch and Orbis within the Hustler because we provide a forum for ideas not appropriate to a daily (well, thrice weekly) paper. My article in the Torch coming out Friday, for example, is a pretty lengthy discussion on the current military situation of China. Honestly, this is not an appropriate piece for the Hustler opinion page since it a rather in depth policy discussion rather than an issue that is relevant to the student population.

Furthermore, I would not write for the Hustler if the Torch were folded, and last year I expressed this to VSC when this became a very real possibility. When I was a senior in high school and I visited Vandy I picked up a copy of the Hustler and I enjoyed reading it, but it wasn't something I wanted to do. I honestly don't feel like having a weekly committment to write for a paper on everyday topics. I then saw a copy of the Torch and was impressed by its quality. I chose to write for them because I could focus on issues of importance to me and conservatives/libertarians in general on a more relaxed time scale. Writing one article a month and then getting to take out the golf cart (which I will be happy when it's back) to do distribution is really satisfying to me. I know I would not be as happy writing for the Hustler because it's just not appealing.

Reeve,

First of all, I want to thank you for your complimentary words about Orbis. We've all worked really hard on the publication this semester, and it's nice to know our work is appreciated.

But I wanted to address a couple of points you've made here. The idea of subsuming Orbis and The Torch into The Hustler has come up fairly regularly ever since the two publications were created five years ago. Last year, Orbis and The Torch were given the opportunity to hitch their wagons to the new converged media divisions of VSC. I think one plan that was floated was that Orbis and The Torch would each have a couple of pages of commentary in Wednesday's Hustler each week.

A few other staff members and I considered the proposal, and I was personally intrigued by the possibility of reaching a wider campus audience. But at the end of the day, we were strongly opposed to abandoning our publication for several reasons. While I can't speak for The Torch, I suspect their reasons were similar to ours.

The main argument made in favor of consolidation is that the talent pool of writers, artists, layout designers, etc. is stretched too thin, and this is a point you have echoed. My response to that is that Orbis is a journalistic outlet for students who would not otherwise participate in student media. I've talked to my most senior staff members at length about this issue, and none of them would have any interest in writing regularly for (or editing) The Hustler. (I personally would seriously consider it, but that's only because I've developed a passion for student media through my involvement in Orbis.) This has nothing to do with disdain for The Hustler or committment to "partisanship*". In fact, three Orbis writers have chipped in guest columns to The Hustler this year. The biggest issue is that the time committment is too great for most of us. It's hard to produce compelling content if you have to deliver once or twice a week, and I personally would rather not write when I don't have anything meaningful or original to say.

Moreover, while reaching as many Vanderbilt students as possible is an important goal for us, it isn't the only goal. Our audience is primarily politically engaged, left-leaning students, and one of the purposes of Orbis is to help, if only in a small way, arm them with arguments that support their viewpoints (an example is Tyler Zimmer's article on student debt in the issue that will hit racks tomorrow). We also like to highlight things that appeal to our base audience but not so much to a general readership (for example, check out the profiles of Bernie Sanders, Jon Tester, and Sherrod Brown we had in our election issue).

Yes, our readership is significantly lower than that of The Hustler among VU students, and you're probably right in suggesting that we'll never have as strong of a presence on campus as we'd like to. However, Orbis reaches a significant amount of readers off campus through our web presence. We often receive feedback (and occasionally submissions) from environmental, feminist, and GLBT organizations around the country. Campus Progress, one of our sponsoring organizations, provides other ways for our voices to be heard. Our writers have had articles picked up and reprinted online by campusprogress.org, which reaches a national audience, along with Wiretap Magazine (wiretapmag.com) and Alternet. Additonally, this past summer, I was contacted through Campus Progress to write a column for Current Magazine (Newsweek's college-oriented publication). The sorts of contacts our writers have built through Orbis have helped us extend our reach well beyond the Vanderbubble.

The format of Orbis also allows us to look at issues in a more in-depth way than The Hustler can. Our new issue has two articles of 1500+ words, and we sometimes print articles longer than 2000. For example, we had an article in October on the humanitarian crisis Somalia that topped out at 2400 words. This sort of feature article doesn't appear to be amenable to The Hustler's format, and while it could have been made shorter, I don't think we do justice to certain types of issues that we care about when we condense them too much.

I realize that this has been a long post, but I believe that the reasons for Orbis and The Torch's independence are often ill-understood, as are our roles on campus.

Believe me, I want The Hustler to be as good as it can be - probably as much as anyone not on your staff. The student newspaper reflects on the university as a whole, and I think we all have an interest in it having top-notch content. But at the same time, I think Orbis and The Torch (like the NYT, WaPo, and USA Today) offer a "social good" for the campus community that's fundamentally different from what The Hustler offers.

Mike Maio
Editor, Orbis

*Partisanship refers to unwavering support for one party. Orbis (and certainly not The Torch) has never been partisan, and many of our staff members only identify with the Democratic Party because they can't find any better options.