Op-ed: The Progress highlights college experience | Opinion | easternprogress.com – The Eastern Progress Online

More than 90 years of journalism went into the production of The Eastern Progress before my byline first appeared in the newspaper in October 2012. But working at the Progress was a cornerstone of my EKU experience.

I started writing for the independent student newspaper during my sophomore year with the encouragement of my professor, Deborah Givens. After completing an interview assignment for Writing and Reporting News 1, she wrote in the remarks that I needed to look at joining the newspaper. The newspaper gave me the opportunity to apply the skills I was learning in the classroom, from learning the ins-and-outs of AP Style to the inverted pyramid, leading with the most important news and writing until the story is finished.

As they say, the rest is history. I rose through the ranks from general assignment reporter to a regular beat covering what was then Residence Life Council, followed by news section editorial roles before landing the title of editor-in-chief in 2014-15.

While I was editor, one point that I worked to emphasize was transparency and holding the public agency of EKU accountable to its stakeholders and the student body. We challenged ,and ultimately lost, an open meetings appeal with then Attorney General Jack Conways office when the Board of Regents traveled to Hazard for its quarterly meeting. We argued that, given the universitys primary location is Richmond, traveling that far for a meeting, when theres only four scheduled throughout the year, essentially limited public access. (In 2014, while videoconferencing was permissible for public agency members to participate in the meeting, it did not change the definition of a public meeting place for the order of participating. Recently, a lot of city and county governments shifted access for meetings from meeting rooms to Facebook Live and Zoom at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, permissible with guidance from the current AG Daniel Camerons office.)

When we did the AG appeal back in 2014, we also wrote an editorial advocating for our point. A cartoon that appeared with it led to a contingent of students from Hazard sending a response the following week opposing our stance and the depiction of a regional campus.

There were other times that we were on the opposite side of what appeared to be popular, such as our opposition to the campus improvement fee, part of which went toward the ultimate renovation of the Powell Building. We took issue with the student senate at the time, how they conducted a secret ballot vote and simply announced it passed. We argued to the university counsel that a secret ballot was not permitted and as a result the student senate read off how each member voted in the following meeting. Was ratifying a secret ballot technically the legal fix? Probably not, but it ultimately satisfied the purpose of ensuring that how those students voted would be made public. We still advocated for more time to communicate how the fee would work and allow student senate to gather opinions, all the way up to emailing members of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, because we felt like the issue had been rammed through by the time it got to them to sign off on it.

Another obstacle came when the universitys communications office wanted to become a gatekeeper in nature and required that we go through them for interviews with faculty, staff and the presidents council. As a student newspaper, it was a burden and limited access to the bulk of our sources for university programs. Unlike other media in Richmond or even Lexington, events, programming and/or decisions that impact the student body are our bread and butter.

We simply couldnt say oh, lets not cover anything EKU-related at all. The office even wanted to redact an interview that was already conducted because the marketing VP at the time had not approved it. After wading through that mess for a while, we were able to converse directly with faculty and staff again, while still going through EKU public relations for interviews and comments from anyone part of the presidents council.

OK, enough about the contentiousness. There were also quite a few ways that we worked with administrators on a regular basis to improve not just our content, but transparency and the reporting process in general.

We worked with the EKU Police Department to create a system for obtaining crime and fire alarm reports electronically on a daily basis, as opposed to us having to go to a dispatcher every week, see if there were reports printed for us and have an editor sign-off on receiving it.

We covered a lot of events at the EKU Center for the Arts and the staff there was able to get us access for a reporter and photographer on a regular basis, unless there was a restriction on photography or videography. One of my favorite photo sets of all time was from a Josh Turner concert in 2014, shot on a Nikon D90 that belonged to the Progress.

And of course, I would be remiss if I didnt point out the working relationship our sports editors and writers had with EKUs sports information directors. Between turning stories around on deadline and getting time to talk with athletes for profile stories, they were some of the newspapers best content.

As I reflect on my time at the Progress, it wasnt a solo effort. The credit for the newspapers success is shared by all of the student editors and writers that appeared on bylines or photo credits. Im absolutely blessed to have been surrounded by great colleagues and journalists while we were completing our degrees at EKU, because its borderline impossible to do meaningful journalism by yourself.

The editors and writers I knew were dedicated to the craft and used it to launch themselves into professional careers in journalism, communications, video production, graphic design, education, non-profit organizations, the judiciary, the military and healthcare, just to name an assortment of occupational fields.

To the former staffers and writers of The Eastern Progress, thanks for providing an excellent foundation to do quality journalism. To the current students of the Progress, thanks for sharing our journalistic commitment as media continues to evolve from legacy platforms into emergent ones. I hope that your work today continues to inspire future cohorts of students into not just preserving, but improving upon the state of journalism and news media at the collegiate level and beyond.

Jacob Blair is a previous editor-in-chief of The Eastern Progress and has more than a half-decade of experience in community journalism. He has a bachelors degree in journalism from Eastern Kentucky University and a masters degree in strategic communication from Washington State University.

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Op-ed: The Progress highlights college experience | Opinion | easternprogress.com - The Eastern Progress Online