Last week presented a fun opportunity for the newspaper to host a reporting trip of students from the Ole Miss journalism program.
They came in Thursday night and spent Friday and Saturday interviewing Columbians and writing about a wide range of topics on an overall theme of what our community has percolating to address the problems that so many rural cities in America face.
The dean of the journalism school, Will Norton, has been leading such trips for decades.
It’s a great opportunity for students to get out into the real world of Mississippi, away from the university atmosphere in Oxford, and see what journalists really do. They were surprised when I told them we produced two newspapers a week, plus a website and a lot of other special sections with a dedicated news staff of just two.
For me, it was reenergizing to be around young people excited about writing, and it was an opportunity for the newspaper to publish some features that I’ve had in my head that I’ve wanted to do for a long time but that everyday demands tend to prevent from happening. I gave them a list of about 15 story ideas that represented a cross-section of what Columbia is working to achieve in education, business, tourism and the like, and they chose which they wanted to pursue.
The seven students gave a representative sample of what the Ole Miss campus is like today. You have a mix of black and white students from throughout the state, coming from places like Tupelo, Laurel, Madison and Durant, as well as out-of-state students who seem to flock to Ole Miss, spanning in this case from as far away as San Diego, Calif., and Orlando, Fla.
The allure of Oxford combines with the lower tuition costs in Mississippi versus other states and, frankly, the lower academic achievement of students native to Mississippi to create that vacuum for students from other places to come to Ole Miss.
Some may not like that, but my thoughts are No. 1: They’re paying full price for out-of-state tuition. No. 2: Maybe some of them will stay and bring new talent and energy to Mississippi.
Norton encouraged me to talk to all the students about newspapers during lunch Friday, and I really enjoyed being able to share the gospel of the press with them. Only one of the seven said they had any interest in a newspaper career, which I anticipated, but I figured that gave me even more reason to give them my pitch for why it’s a great profession. Sure, it’s one where you tend to work a lot of hours for not what college graduates could make in most other jobs, but it’s one where you can really make a difference. And in the end, isn’t that more important?
I told the students rural Mississippi communities are suffering a leadership crisis caused by the most talented young people moving out. They will certainly have opportunities themselves to work in the South’s growing megalopolises like Nashville, Birmingham and Dallas, but I challenged them to consider coming to a small town. In places like Columbia, their talent can truly make a difference for the community as a whole in a way that it’s simply never going to in a huge city.
They universally remarked that everyone in Columbia was so friendly to them, so you can give yourselves a pat on the back for that.
Admittedly, it’s unlikely that most of them will ever return here or that our paths will cross again, but I’m glad I made my case for newspapers and rural Mississippi when I had the chance.
Look for the Ole Miss student-journalists’ stories to be published in the Oct. 31 edition. It’s our annual mass mailer sent to every home in the county that we publish in the fall to distribute our phone book, so you can’t miss it.
Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him at (601) 736-2611 or csmith@columbianprogress.com.
