Following is candidate Stacey Hamman’s speech for the executive-editor position at The CT. Hamman is running unopposed for the position, and voting ends Friday, April 25 at 5 p.m. Those who have been published in The CT within the past year may vote at the Student Media Center during business hours and may request a ballot at the front desk.
“Over the past few years, I have come to understand that without vision, plans are pointless, and without planning, life can be incomplete. But getting the most out of life comes from having a plan based in vision. Leading up through the end of this semester, I have been in a stage of preparation. I have been honing my skills as copy-desk chief both for The Commonwealth Times and for VCU’s Capital News Service, and I’ve been paying attention particularly to the quality of work that both these outlets have produced.
I believe in wholehearted dedication to the values that are key in our field. These values are essential to maintaining the pride of our profession-unbiased reporting based in knowledge, quality of content, truth, fairness and accuracy.
It’s been an honor to work under the supervision of our current executive and managing editors; I’ve learned a lot from them. I’ve seen that their professionalism and work ethic have maintained the integrity of this paper, and if elected, I will continue to manage The CT as it should be run.
I think The CT, as an independent newspaper, provides us with an opportunity to empower the students of this university as well as to inform them. Because we’ve become a multimedia generation, I would like to see The CT branching out further in that respect. Not only will I work to balance the output of the newspaper and the Web site, I would like to take the site further and expand our Web presence with multimedial elements.
I think this expansion will be advantageous by drawing students’ interest. I hope, as a result, more students will be inclined to interact and to participate in The CT and in the community. I would like to see the paper becoming more comprehensive in its coverage, to really shed light on issues about which the public should be informed.
In articles I wrote this past year, I was able to cover the circumstances of various groups or individuals about whom I thought every person should be aware. For example, I wrote about the state of the New Orleans evacuees, and I wrote about the displaced of Uganda as related to the VCU chapter of Invisible Children.
Those pieces are really the result of a collective mindset that I admit I have-a dedication to society as a whole, to the community, to the people. I see working at a newspaper as a privilege. And, more than that, as a responsibility-a responsibility not only to provide accurate reports but also to better the state of the society in which we live.”
-Stacey Hamman, candidate for Executive Editor