Story by Kristin Gallagher, Business Manager

Although you may not know it, there is a right and wrong way to express your opinions of the student newspaper. 

You can always complain to the people around you willing to listen, but the newspaper staff may never hear that, and you run the risk of never seeing the changes you want.

You can find the student name attached to a story and send them personal emails with your critiques, but odds are these students will delete such emails, or advise you to take the proper steps to voice your opinion.

Since some people seem unsure of this process, I thought I would give some friendly advice to help everyone out.

Proper procedure for expressing your views, concerns and critiques of the student newspaper:

1.  Maintain composure. Keep your unruly rants to yourself until you can find the strength to incorporate reasoning into your judgment.

2.  When calm, compose a short letter to the editor. Not to the reporters, columnists, photographers, etc.

If you are so educated that you know everything about newspapers and how they should be composed, then you should be well versed in proper procedure for expressing your concerns regarding a newspaper’s content.

3.  If you feel the urge to mark up the entire newspaper with errors you find and send it back to the editor, please refrain.

If you are not the adviser of the organization, then you should not feel obligated to go to such lengths to point out weaknesses.

In such a situation, the staff in no way feels an obligation to read your comments, either.

That’s it. Those are the three simple steps to express your opinion on the student newspaper.

If for some reason these steps do not suit you, then please, feel free to keep your opinions to yourself.