"Your connection, your voice"

These days, I don't know which it's more exciting to be: a newspaper writer or a newspaper reader. I also can't decide which is more frightening.

For writers, scary things are everywhere, and they're all connected. The Newsweek debacle, the lingering effects of Jayson Blair, plummeting trust in the media, even steeper dropping newspaper subscription rates, the onset of infotainment.

Bottom line, the media needs to take a long, hard look at itself before it takes any further steps into the 21st century.

At the forefront of all this there is Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter who was jailed this summer for refusing to identify confidential sources to a federal grand jury investigating the leak of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. I say 'forefront' because even though it isn't at the start of journalism's problems, it is certainly at the root of them.

Yes, there's no federal shield law for journalists, and yes, the state laws that do exist do not provide absolute protection, but the federal ruling in the Miller case puts at risk a key tenet of journalism. And that is the problem. In all too many areas right now, the key tenets, the foundations that make American journalism worthwhile, successful, and important have been shook loose from both the inside-out and the outside-in.

There are two sides, though, to this shakeup. As terrifying as they can be -- and God knows there are doomsdayers out there -- they can also serve as a wakeup call.

It's just as frightening today to be a reader as a writer, and for many of the same reasons. Who can you trust after Jayson Blair and Newsweek? What can you believe when people like Ann Coulter and Al Franken are placed on the same level as actual journalists? What can you expect from an industry scrambling to figure out why less people are reading the news and whether newspapers really are a dying breed in the age of blogs and Google News?

But in the same vein of that wakeup call, these are the same reasons to be excited. Newspapers and the people they serve look at each other today from either side of an enormous gap. The core reason we are where we are is because newspapers, to a certain degree, have lost touch with the people, and the people have lost touch with their newspapers. To be at the center of piecing that relationship back together is a tremendous challenge, but it's not impossible, and I for one am thrilled to be able to take part in it.

At no point in recent years has The Spectrum been responsible for religious riots in Asia. At no point have we had a Jayson Blair and at no point has our government or administration tried to directly censor our work. But that doesn't mean we're not part of the bigger picture.

Am I saying we've lost touch with our readers, with the UB community, and vice versa? No, I'm not. But I am saying I think we can do a better job. If we have one goal at The Spectrum, it is to serve our readership and our community, to be a great college newspaper. And what is a great college newspaper? Above all, I see it as a voice, a forum, a connection. But it's only a connection that works if it's functioning as a two-way street. This year we want to you to engage us just as we try to engage you.

I have no idea what's going to happen this semester in the news. What I do know is that through articles and editorials, letters and forums, features and photos we're going to make a conscious effort to better connect with you, our readers. As an academic center, this should be the last place we allow a vacuum of ideas and information to form.

This is The Spectrum. Your newspaper. Your connection. Your voice. And we're looking to become a truly great college newspaper.