A few weeks ago during the Tuesday night newspaper marathon, a staff member of considerable campus fame shook my hand, congratulating the newspaper staff and myself on our coverage of the faculty cuts. This was my first conversation with her, and I was awe-struck. “She reads my writing!” I thought to myself, and I commented to the staff in the office that the encounter was the highlight of my semester. This was a sentiment I heard a few times throughout the week, from professors, other students and staff members. 

A few weeks before that, an anonymous poster on Yik-Yak informed me my balls had been found in the little girl’s washroom. Another told me I may get beat up if I didn’t shut up. 

This, along with countless other threats, insults and complaints, most of which were anonymous, came in response to my column on Greek recruitment. 

I’ve been on The Collegian editorial staff for nearly a full year now. I’ve written 50 or 60 articles for this paper, totaling tens of thousands of words available to the world, but it wasn’t until this year that I began to understand how significant publishing written work can be. Those two experiences come from dramatically different emotions, but they both pointed to something new I would be experiencing. I was Zack Lemon, Ashland University student, but I was also Zack Lemon, The Collegian reporter, and I was making a far bigger impact as the latter.

What we publish matters. Not “we”, as in The Collegian staff, but “we”, the entire Ashland University community. Social media and the Internet make all of us publishers. They give all of us an audience far larger than we could imagine. 

People read things. It seems obvious, but I forget it often. I forget my writing for The Collegian is fundamentally different from an academic paper. No one but my professor knows my thoughts on Congressional representation; anyone who wants to know my opinion on Greek recruitment can find it with a Google search. A prospective student can see opinions on the recent faculty cuts, and a concerned parent can get a look into Ashland’s troubled financial history with ease. When we criticize the people, organizations, and particularly the university carelessly, we do real damage. 

Following the Internet outrage, I became acutely aware I was writing about real people. Covering campus means I am writing about people’s passions and careers. I am writing about the most important things in many people’s lives. Whether criticizing, praising or simply offering facts, nothing I cover is irrelevant to everyone. Someone deeply cares, and its likely wide swaths of campus cares; that’s why its being covered. 

I’d like to imagine there is a clear distinction between the student and the reporter. I’d like to imagine my work can be criticized and attacked, praised and lauded, separate from me. No amount of great work makes me a decent person, and no amount of awful work makes me a bad one. Social media and the ability to be anonymous wipe away that line for many commenters, but it reinforces for me the importance of the published word. A name in print is a person in the world, whether the name be mine or anyone else’s. Those words will exist forever, for anyone to access; something we all need to remember.