Starting the first Sunday of October and going through Oct. 6-12 is the 84th national newspaper week, a promotion of the newspaper industry that celeberates the efforts of journalists and newspapers in both the U.S as well as Canada.

Existing since the 1940s, national newspaper week is supported and sponsored by the Newspaper Association Managers (NAM). According to their website, NAM is “a professional organization of executives of state, regional, national and international newspaper associations headquartered in the United States and Canada.”

What does celebrating national newspaper week look like for us Pioneers? For one, you can always continue to pick up our paper issues and send the online versions of our articles to your friends outside the university.

Celebrating can extend beyond just reading our content too – for instance, rememebring what The Globe has reported on and possibly change for the better indirectly.

Think about the Dining Hall piece that was published last week. Not only did a first-time writer get a chance to cover an issue that is relevant and timely to our campus community, but their reporting was able to create change. 

The town halls with CulinArt are in direct response to our reporting, there is no doubt about that.

But there is an important distinction that needs to be made about newspapers, and it is that they exist to report on the facts. Sure, positive change may happen because of our reporting and our newsroom realizes the importance of our work, but that’s not the end goal of being a journalist.

Extending beyond bragging about our own reporting, we as students should look at what other papers around the Pittsburgh region are covering as well. Read the Pittsburgh City Paper, read the Tribune-Review, and read all the niche, specific publications that get your attention.

 What if you’re not from this area? Read your local papers too. While social media posts can quickly get information across to large audiences, they often don’t have the word space to cover all the necessary facts. 

The reality is, it is newspaper journalists who are willing to sit through the boring meetings, go to the protests front and center, and show up to tell the stories that need to be told.

The national newspaper week website asks journalists to reflect on what brought them to the path of news. Each of The Globe’s staff writers and editors have vastly different backgrounds and individual stories as to what brought them to the paper. Some of us had journalistic training in high school, others did not. What’s your story, student writers?