I can still clearly remember walking into my first pitch meeting.
It was late October, 2018, a month into my first year at Renaissance College. I had stumbled across a post advertising two open reporter positions and excitedly applied, looking for a way to get involved on campus.
That first meeting was terrifying. I had wandered around the Student Union Building for fifteen minutes struggling to find the office hidden down a back hallway and was almost late. Ideas and questions flew around the room, overlapping and bumping into each other, all coming from voices that sounded so sure of themselves. I remained completely silent, making a mental list of jargon to look up later, until I heard myself say “I’ll take that” to a commentary piece on a straight-pride flag that had been raised in Chipman.
That was the first of many stories, on topics ranging from historic elections and depleted counselling budgets to a campus-famous meme page and local alien research. Over time, that terror was overtaken by excitement, and I found myself to be one of the voices confidently pitching ideas and asking questions. Working here has pushed me outside of my comfort zone both creatively and personally, has led me to incredible opportunities I would never have imagined for myself, and has allowed me to contribute to something bigger than myself.
In the time that I have been here, I have seen the Bruns grow following a significant shift in management last fall. The staff of the last two years have done incredible work in restabilizing and rebuilding the publication in the face of change, conflict and uncertainty, but we are still missing an instrumental piece of the puzzle: you.
Journalism is at its best when it is a conversation. It is the responsibility of a publication to provide relevant, accurate and interesting content to its audience, while also listening to what that audience is looking for. At some point, the conversation between the Bruns and its audience became quite one-sided. So in the next year, the team and I hope to bring the Bruns back to you, the student body, in new, creative and engaging ways.
I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to step in the role of Editor-in-Chief for the 2020-2021 academic year, and look forward to another year of working and growing as a part of this community.