We here on the blog have been feeling that lately we've been losing some focus. With more boisterous and demanding readership, an election campaign, and fewer (non-graduating) writers, the pressure (and temptation) to spit out easy personality-centered posts is hard to resist. This is an attempt to step back and re-balance. Though it may not be in your face, this blog is and has always been based on a certain type of philosophy, which goes beyond reporting news, or having a personal pulpit. By creating this mission statement, we're laying out the values and goals we aspire to with our blog. We hope that it will give both ourselves and our readers clear(ish) expectations of our journalism, and our community here on the blog. We hope that by laying out these expectations and aspirations, we'll help ourselves live up to them, and help you understand the place we're coming from. Bear in mind that this exercise is somewhat platonic - this is a chair in the sky - but this is the chair we'll be trying to approximate, though we may not always make it.
Our Mission:
- To use our experience, networks, and knowledge base to empower UBC students to educate themselves about campus and university affairs. We will present issues, deliver background as clearly as possible, and use those issues as springboards for open discussion.
- To be inclusive. We will strive to engage as many students as possible and invite our fellow university community members to participate in discussion that is relevant to them.
- To thoroughly discuss the issues themselves and where people fit into them rather than the other way around.
- To provide intelligent and insightful commentary and perspectives on issues relating to UBC and the UBC community.
- To create a lively and respectful forum for debate and discussion of campus and higher education issues
Our Values:
- The balance of facts in concert with perspective; the understanding that this balance is fine but adjustable.
- Respect and trust in each other.
- Refusing to obliterate our unique voices and positionalities (or those of our readers) in pseudo-objective conceits.
- The assumption of the intelligence of our readers.
- Accessibility to UBC's complete student body
- due diligence with facts and source checking.
Our philosophy:
Think of our blog as broccoli: it may not be the most attractive and appealing food, but damn if it's not good for you and ultimately delicious. While we may have named ourselves the "insiders," we do not subscribe to the duality of in/out; we recognize the value of different brands of involvement unlike our own. Relating items from the weekly news-cycle to longer term issues is a priority. Gossip will be minimal, but juicy when we do run it. The AMS is not the centre of the universe. Our posts will be accessible on several levels of previous knowledge. The spirit of investigation and depth of analysis are important to us. We write what we're interested in, without presumptions of doing everything and satisfying everyone.
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