Wednesday, January 16, 2019 // The Statement 
7B
Wednesday, February 27, 2019 // The Statement 
 
7B

M

y typical Ann Arbor week-
end: I’ve made the trek down 
to Main Street to one of my 
favorite coffee shops and, before I get 
started on schoolwork, I sit with a fresh 
mug of black coffee and a crisp copy of 
the newspaper. That’s right: the news, on 
paper. Hard-copy news is still alive and 
well.
I joined The Michigan Daily on a whim 
when a friend ardently convinced me, 
and one year later, here I am in the posi-
tion of senior copy editor. As part of the 
copy section at The Daily, I now spend 
each week fact-checking and editing 
the grammar of articles. Looking back, 
I realize I joined not for the enthusiasm 
of editing or even the chance to belong to 
The Daily community, but out of a sub-
conscious passion for preserving the art 
of printed news — no app, email or Twit-
terverse sound-bitten form of news.
Today, society innovatively manages to 
stay informed and connected. However, 
it’s rare to see college students and mil-
lennials picking up and reading a physi-
cal newspaper like my grandparents do 
every morning at the breakfast table. For 
me, newspapers are the last true bastion 
of reliable information in an age of ques-
tionable online sources. As a copy editor, 
I understand the pertinence of not only 
grammatical editing but the absolute 
necessity of fact-checking for accurate 
information.
Ironically, I’m writing this article to 
an intended audience of college students 
and millennials who probably won’t 
actually read it. I’m sending a message in 
a bottle into the ocean hoping someone 
will eventually find it buried in the sand 
on a distant shore. This metaphor might 
be extreme, but you get the message (pun 
intended).
Most students, myself included, mind-
lessly scroll through their phones the 
way apps have trained us to do. A print 
newspaper forces us to stop and smell 
the roses. It distracts us in a wholesome 
way and forces us to reflect — even for 
just a minute of our day — on what else 
is going on in the world, without see-
ing these events through the unfocused 
lenses of social media sources. Though 
not impossible, it’s difficult to quickly 
and frantically skim the printed news in 
a rush to class or while walking through 
the crowds of State Street. A newspaper 
demands our full attention — a concept 
most of us reserve for binge-watching 
“Friends.”

A newspaper says more than the words 
on its pages. The voice of established pub-
lications such as The New York Times, 
The Washington Post and The Chicago 
Tribune all have specific styles that 
effectively reveal the inner truths of a 
location and subculture. The newspaper 
inherently conveys emotion and mood 
and has a personal effect on the reader. 
When touring colleges as a senior in high 
school, I always picked up the colleges’ 
student newspapers to assess the campus 
vibe and to understand the voice of its 
students.
Not surprisingly, one of my favor-
ite parts of my day during my summer 
internship experience in Washington, 
D.C., was reading Express, a free daily 
publication from The Washington Post, 
on the Metro every morning. It served 
not only as a source for the current state 
of the union and political shenanigans, 
but also became my personal guide to 

the city. The “Weekend Pass” section 
highlighted destinations of interest, local 
events, upcoming concerts and the new-
est museum exhibits in a way no website 
or friend recommendation could do. I 
found myself ending up everywhere from 
the steps of the National Portrait Gallery 
for the free Fall Out Boy concert before 
the Capitals’ playoff game to the Hirsh-
horn Museum for the Georg Baselitz 
exhibit ¬¬¬— all of this as a result of read-
ing the news.
If the news is so subtly transformative 
in our daily lives, then being involved 
with The Daily as copy editor is all the 
more transformative to my own life. 
While working at The Daily (and in an 
effort to keep current for my political 
science classes), I have refined my news-
reading habits and become inspired to 
declare an English major with a political 
science minor. Being involved so closely 
with the news introduced me to my own 

curiosity and excitement for reading that 
transcends the confines of the classroom 
and the realm of academia. I came to 
appreciate a news article as an art form, 
much like that of great literature, poetry 
or lyrics.
Though not truly an aging dinosaur 
yet, newspapers just might have a come-
back in our generation, much in the same 
way vinyl record players and Polaroid 
pictures have cluttered the dorm rooms 
of college students. I can only hope.
So as I finish my coffee shop session of 
weekend studying, I will leave behind my 
paged-through copy of The Daily with 
the intention that someone else might 
pick it up, take the time to read it, then 
leave it for the next person. Either that or 
it will end up on the bottom of their new 
puppy’s training cage. Regardless, I will 
continue to do my best to initiate a new 
reader — even if it’s just one hard copy at 
a time.

BY REECE MEYHOEFER, SENIOR COPY EDITOR

Copy That: To whom it 
may concern

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL

