Why I am (and am not) failing

This is the last issue I will oversee as editor-in-chief. When my term ends this semester, I will essentially be kicked out of the office so the next board can do their job without me standing behind them telling them how to do it.

It’s traditional for the outgoing EIC to write a goodbye column for this issue. Usually it takes the form of something you might find in a yearbook. Dear staff, thanks so much, the ‘Prince’ is so awesome, sometimes we screw up, etc.

That’s nice. They always made me a bit sentimental at the end of each board. They probably still would if I reread them.

But here’s the thing. My staff knows how much I love them. They know that because I haven’t fired them yet. They’ll know that even more when I send them a series of tearful emails over the next two weeks dripping with pathos and loneliness and when they can hear my muffled cries outside the office windows next semester when I’m standing in the alley beneath our building and staring up at the light, wishing I were still there.

But that’s between us. It’s better that way. After three-and-a-half years of living in this office, thinking and sleeping and breathing with this paper, I’m done. I’m a private person. That’s why I’m not a columnist. I’ll say my goodbyes in private.

I still have to write a column though. Yet I have a lot of Dean’s Date work to do. I still don’t really know what I’m writing my thesis on. I am officially, unnaturally, innately nocturnal, and I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since I serendipitously discovered the ‘Prince’ recruitment booth at the Activities Fair in September 2008. I also might fail out of school because I took on a 70+ hour per week job that is incompatible with both rationality and academic productivity.

So I’m going to tell you the most important, central, indelible thing you should know about the ‘Prince’ and hope that you never, ever forget it. Here’s how I’m going to begin:

In last Friday’s joke issue, we ran a fake article titled “University officials, Yaro ’12 caught in sex sting,” which perversely was one of the most-read articles that day. The body of the text — in an homage to true Harry Potter geekdom — was replaced with the word “censored” and the line, “Educational Decree Number Eighty-Nine: By order of the High Inquisitor, this article has been censored.”

This was partially a lame attempt to fill space. But there was also a joke in the very premise of this paper being censored.

You see, we’re completely independent. A lot of you don’t realize this — we get plenty of comments accusing the ‘Prince’ of bending to the University and stifling a story on missing teachers/the latest ban on fun/USG election fraud and the like.

A few weeks ago I heard that a submitted article endorsing a particular USG candidate was pulled after a USG representative stormed into our offices and demanded that I pull the column or face dire consequences.

First, I have to say that whoever believed that story and knows me is seriously clueless.

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(Not that we don’t all secretly fear the omniscient wrath of our student government. What if I were to be banned from free movie night? That thought keeps me up at night. What hath Yaro wrought...)

Second, it’s okay that you’re completely uninformed about this paper. That’s probably our fault. And it’s our job to inform you.

So here’s how we work: We don’t get anything from the University. Not a cent. We pay rent for our offices. Our publishing costs are covered entirely by our ad revenue; we have a business department that works every day to raise the $600,000-plus it takes to print the newspaper.

I don’t report to anyone within the University. Anyone. They have no control over what this paper does. I report to a board of trustees made up of ‘Prince’ alumni who were equally independent from the University when they ran this paper 10 or 100 years ago or whatever it was.

Side note to the Trustees: I want to be one of you when I grow up. Just throwing it out there.

And you know how I mentioned this job sometimes sucks and I might fail out of school? That’s partially because this job falls outside the University’s official recognition and there’s no support net. All my editors made an immense sacrifice in committing themselves to this board. Some of them didn’t make it through, and I respect that. But this board is made of students who sacrificed more than you know to make sure you had an open flow of information.

(I wouldn’t trade that, because our independence means something to me. But I’m sorry, professors, for all the times I missed class because something went terribly wrong here. I really am. I’ll make it up to you.)

But while this might seem like a random background story on how we work, it’s really crucial to how we operate.

You see, in an age where the ethics behind free media are constantly under debate and even the most noteworthy media outlets are slanted, opaque and often corrupt, this paper is one of a handful of completely independent college outlets.

Most of those other schools you applied to? If you’d ended up there, you probably would be reading stories each day that someone from the school approved of or they wouldn’t have made it to your breakfast tables.

When former professor Antonio Calvo passed away last spring, we published all the information we could get despite the fact that certain University officials were told they couldn’t speak to us. We broke the story that it might have been something more than a simple tragedy.

When something goes wrong in the USG elections, we tell you. When the University decides to ban frats or fun or whatever’s next to go, we’ll tell you all sides of the story.

The ‘Prince’ attracts criticism, yes. Our readership includes the same people who turned PrincetonFML into a campus-wide phenomenon. But that’s superficial.

Because whatever happens, whatever you disagree with, this paper will always do its best to make sure that any information that you should know comes to you, regardless of gag orders, angry sources or promised lawsuits. We give everything to make sure you know.

That’s my promise. The day that mission changes is the day I drop whatever I’m doing in five or 10 years and show back up in this very office to restore it.

Ameena M. Schelling is the outgoing editor-in-chief of The Daily Princetonian. She can be reached at aschelli@princeton.edu.