Salute to The Vista!

(I'm unable to download the pdf sent to me by adviser Teddy Burch of today's page one and the future pages, but I'll figure it out soon. Meanwhile...Today's issue of the student newspaper at UCO, The Vista, capped an energetic, tremendous semester of transition and excellence. This is some of the strongest content we've had in a long time. We are packed with talent, and the staff and adviser have set a high standard that previous editors would be proud of. I'm thankful I know these students and adviser and have been able to work with them. I'm proud, as a journalist, what they have achieved.

I'm also proud and encouraged that these students--I started to call them kids, but they're not, and I've never treated them as such--are so dedicated, so passionate. As editor Laura Hoffert puts it, they "bleed ink." They have the "fire in the belly" that sets great journalists apart from the crowd.

Look The Vista up online and read copy editor Caleb McWilliams' closing column as a copy editor. He's been hired full time at The Oklahoman in that slot...not the first UCO grad to be professional and good enough to go that job (Chad Anderson), also held on a part-time basis in the past by both myself and Bill Hickman

As it has been with me, returning just to professing after 20 years, it has been a year of transition for them. They've merged newsroom with our terrific broadcast students, and actually like them and vice-versa for the most part. How can you tell? Because they constantly gibe each other, face to face or in private--as they should. Big adjustment and transition--not always smooth, for all of them, but they have the energy and spirit to make it work. The transitions will continue with a redesign coming for the first time in years when the new semester begins. New blood, new ideas, new potential.

I mostly fear for their future, that this staff and my other students will be able to find jobs in the fields of their passion. In spite of changing technology however, journalism ain't dead, and is in good hands with the caliber of students I'm privileged to call mine.

Here's to the lifeblood of The Vista, the student voice of UCO since 1903--our students.

Thank you.