University of Wisconsin student volunteers are piecing together an alternative student news source on rented laptops at Helen C. White, motivated by what they say is their paper’s magnification of less-heard voices and its emphasis on the community’s connection to national news.
UW sophomore and Multicultural Student Coalition member Youssef Sawan, one of the four students who founded the publication, said the MCSC currently funds the Madison Observer, publishing 1,500 copies weekly.
Sawan said the students’ inspiration for the newspaper stemmed from what he said was the campus newspapers’ lackluster coverage of the Books Not Bombs rally in March.
“We felt that while the national and even the state coverage was quite extensive, there was a lack of local coverage into it,” Sawan said. “They were not really looking into it and what it really was about.”
Sawan said there is a clear distinction between news content and editorial content in the paper, despite the MCSC funding and several MCSC members on the paper’s staff. He said staff members hope to become completely independent by next fall through advertising in the paper.
However, Sawan said the staff would not print any advertising from large corporations or chains, in order to maintain the publication’s community-based focus.
“That’s part of being independent; we’re supporting the local community and maintaining purely a student interest,” Sawan said.
Sawan said he is tired of seeing the same coverage in The Badger Herald and Daily Cardinal, with both papers reacting to the other in competition. He said the papers have merged into a similar mindset and have become hard to distinguish from one another, but the Madison Observer would take a step back from the others to present a more creative form of media, with artwork and poetry.
Sawan also critiqued the student newspapers’ neglect of certain local issues, such as the Tyson Foods strikes in Jefferson, a town 35 miles east of Madison.
“Student labor activists are active in helping the workers, but it doesn’t get covered because there doesn’t seem to be a direct connection,” Sawan said.
Madison Observer volunteer and UW sophomore Reneé Medved said she thinks the main difference between mainstream media and the Madison Observer is its conscious effort to avoid regurgitating the government’s messages, unlike the current campus media.
Medved said the Observer staff strives to place news stories in context, with explanations and analysis of an event’s background and history rather than a simple narration of the event.
The paper’s third publication will come out Thursday, with issues available in the Social Science, Ingraham, Van Hise, Red Gym and Memorial Union newsstands.
The first Madison Observer edition ran April 17 with a philosophical analysis of today’s media on the front page along with student poetry. The Observer’s writers have covered a range of topics, including the Lisa Link Peace Park renovations, the history of U.S. intervention in Iraq, the proposed campus power plant and the Patriot Act. The paper also features a weekly listing of events in Madison.
