To give you the news as it really happens

Tyler Dukes began his 2006 position paper, part of his application for Technician editor, thusly:

“To this day, I still can’t tell you what did it.

“I can’t elaborate on what drew me, an awkward engineering freshman from Eastern North Carolina, over to that corner in Talley Ballroom, where a former editor in chief of the Technician stood waiting.

“…Whatever the reason, I did wander over there. He did give me that pitch. I did write my first article

“And I’ve never been the same.”

Tyler isn’t alone on the Technician staff. Staff surveys have shown that less than half of the staff comes in without any journalism experience. In fact, historically, the staff has been dominated by white, liberal, upperclassmen (not women) often majoring in engineering or science. Yet after a year or two on staff, about 80 percent of the staff members report plans to work in marketing, public relations or journalism.

For 30 percent of the staff, working on the Technician has made a difference in their career choices.

On Feb. 8, 1920, the Technician, led by editor Marion Francis Trice, a senior in chemical engineering, came out with its first edition, nearly four years after its predecessor the Red and White “died a quiet but stubborn death.” As an “editorial” in the Agromeck yearbook reported, “now we have an eight-page sheet, alive from cover to back and back again, full of bunk and the old college line–Give her gas, fellows—Give her gas. She just can’t leak and sink like that ancestor of hers.”

A decade later, the Agromeck reported that the goal of The Technician was to “give you the news as it has really happened at North Carolina State College. News that is conservative–but spiced with a few phenomenal stories that go to make an interesting newspaper.

“The State College paper aspires to be a student’s chronicle–to record the history of your college days as it is made each day….”

By 1940, The Technician was considered “the official organ of the student body, and renders a valuable service not only to the students but also to the alumni, faculty, parents and others interested in the development of North Carolina State College.

As the Agromeck reported: “Twenty years ago…the exact date being February 8, 1920…the first edition of The Technician made its appearance on campus. Considered, in its infancy, to be an unwise and unprofitable enterprise, it waged a two-year battle against mounting odds before becoming firmly established. In 1922, the newspaper was made into a weekly, and in that form it has remained down to the present time.”

The rich history of the newspaper as a public forum for student opinion, and the insistence of the top-level administrators that the students control the content, have made the newspaper the voice of the campus even with a staff that starts each year with little journalism experience or coursework.

This staff manual is an attempt to provide staff members with some fundamental knowledge about the basics of journalism – what they will need to know as a reporter, copy editor, designer or photographer entering the staff. It’s not an attempt to substitute for news or feature writing courses or for the experience of sitting down with an editor to go over a story.

With this staff manual also has to come the realization that not everything about being on the Technician staff can be put in a manual. Certainly not the fun times or the staff bonding exercises late at night after a late-breaking news story. Take this manual. Read it. Focus on accurate and unbiased reporting. Then apply the knowledge and evaluate your progress at every stage. Then realize that there’s so much more to the world of journalism, a world that can change the very direction in which this University moves as well as the direction of the staff members.

As Tyler said, “I’m a much better person since the Technician found me.”

Technician Staff Manual by Bradley Wilson Coordinator of Student Media Advising

With

Thushan Amarasiriwardena Technician co-editor 2003-2004

Tyler Dukes Technician editor 2006-2007

Josh Harrell Technician managing editor 2006-2007

Tanner Kroeger Technician sports editor 2006

Mark McLawhorn Technician editor 1999-2001

artwork

Carie Windham Technician co-editor 2003-2004

©2006 NC State Student Media