Daniel Conrad ’18

The Trinitonian team works tirelessly every day to provide an audience of thousands — about 3,600 students, parents, alumni, staff, faculty, board members and more — with a valuable service at no charge. A free press isn’t free, but it is vital to the Trinity community, and that’s why it deserves our support.

Photographers and video staff bear witness to events that affect the campus community. Reporters attend events, research trends and interview community members to keep us informed. Columnists put themselves out there in order to criticize and comment on issues that are worth arguing about. Copy editors, illustrators, audio and graphics staff keep this content fresh and present it in a way designed to catch your eye and hold your interest. The head editors somehow keep track of it all to fill dozens of pages each week with new, pertinent content, and get it online before the paper hits the stands.

The newspaper isn’t just an institution to be taken for granted. It’s a group of your students who put principle into practice by zealously reporting the news. Without their hard work — the hard work of your friends, classmates, students, children or what have you — there would be no first draft of Trinity history on the pages every week, there would be no independent organization championing your interests.

Yet they do it, and for absurdly little pay to boot. The Trinitonian might be more than an institution, but it’s still an institution, and those cost a lot of money to run. The business and advertising staff put up a brave fight, constantly working to keep this multi-hundred-thousand-dollar business afloat. And every little bit counts.

If you support Trinity University’s sole source of truly independent, hyperlocal student journalism — if you understand the importance of a quality community newspaper, of a shared public forum — then consider contributing to the Trinitonian’s mission.

They don’t do it for the money. They do it because they care. But if it weren’t for the money, there’d be no group of committed, values-driven students working hard for the sake of the university.

An investment in the Trinitonian is an investment in your community. If you care about the one, you ought to care about the other.