Stop the presses: Community college paper production comes to halt
After more than 30 years, the award-winning monthly student newspaper at Henderson Community College has come to a halt.
Tony Strawn, The Hill’s faculty adviser for 31 years, has stepped down. While he will continue as a full-time professor, no one is replacing him as the paper’s adviser this semester.
Meanwhile, he said, student interest in being on The Hill’s staff has dwindled over the years even while circulation was at 1,200.
“It had become more of a struggle each semester to get a good staff that could really put out the quality of product that we could put out,” he said.
“We always had a core of four or five really good kids, but it just got tougher and tougher.”
This means the paper might not be published until the spring semester — if a replacement adviser can be found then, Strawn said.
He said he was not aware whether a faculty member was interested in the position.
Being the faculty adviser was labor intensive because not all the students who worked on the newspaper had a background in journalism.
Strawn said he often had to teach students about the basic questions they needed to ask to write stories as well as how to run computer programs that are used to create the newspaper.
“I always enjoyed it,” Strawn said. “(But) when it no longer became a fully student newspaper, I decided it was time to take a break.”
Now that the paper is no more, students and staff won’t have an organized system to learn about events at the Henderson Fine Arts Center, which is located on campus. Information about class registration, student clubs, fundraisers and more won’t be as easily accessible in one publication, either.
Also missing now will be photographs of events taking place on campus — like pick-up basketball on the parking lot, Strawn said.
“I’ve had a couple faculty members say it’s going to be a shame,” he added.
As for the students who regularly worked for The Hill newspaper, Strawn said that while they were disappointed, they will likely survive the change.
“They will just redirect their energies” into other activities like the History Club or Phi Beta Kappa.
The paper received a stipend each semester from the foundation at the college to cover production costs. The rest of its budget — about 70 percent — came from advertising.
And like other newspapers around the country struggling for advertising dollars, The Hill felt the hit, too.
“It was getting harder to fund it,” Strawn said.
Still, Henderson Community College President Dr. Pat Lake was more philosophical about the paper’s future.
“It’s taking a sabbatical,” he said, adding that the paper may be published at a later date.
The college, which started in 1960, has had some sort of newspaper since the mid-to-late 1960s. At one point, one paper was called Serendipity.
Strawn said that when he came to the campus as a professor in the fall of 1978, the paper was called The Stab.
The origins of that name are unknown, but it is thought it could have been an acronym for Student Activities Board, he said.
A contest was held to rename the paper, and it was called The Hill starting in the spring of 1979, Strawn said.
Meanwhile, the paper’s hiatus means it will no longer vie for many of the awards it won in years past.
According to HCC’s Web site, The Hill earned All-American honors from the Associated Collegiate Press Association for the 1996-97 edition.
It was also named Outstanding Kentucky Community College Newspaper in 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006.
