All right Loyola, let’s make some news.

After six years in the world of professional journalism, I am happily returning to where I began – the Loyola Student Media. It’s good to be back.

This year I am beginning what I hope will be many years as adviser for The Maroon, The Wolf Magazine and The Wolf Yearbook. I am excited by our bright future.

Even in this melancholy year, I see a world of opportunity brewing within the student media. Our staff is young, energetic and talented.

In addition to carrying on the award-winning tradition at The Maroon, we will be reviving the Wolf Magazine – a quarterly sister publication to the Wolf Yearbook. And we hope to push the bounds of multimedia with our online products.

But guess what Loyola – we need your help.

That’s right. Consider this my clarion call asking for your help making our Student Media as strong as it has ever been.

What do we need from you?

A lot, actually.

First, we need your cooperation. Our young journalists are eager to document the happenings in your world. But before we can write about the good, the interesting, and yes, even the bad and embarrassing, we need your cooperation.

We will strive to do our part by reflecting an accurate and fair picture of the university. We will seek out and tell the stories that define us as a campus. That means when we call your office, stop you in the quad, or even pull you aside in class, we need you to take some time to talk with us.

We promise to reward your cooperation with an honest and fair reflection in the news.

Second, we need your patience.

Realize that while our student media is staffed by an ambitious and talented group of young journalists, we are young all the same.

I promise we will make mistakes along the way, as even the most seasoned professionals are prone to do. But let me make this promise: for every mistake we make, we will go above and beyond the call of duty to make things right.

Let us know when we get something wrong and we will be more than happy to run a correction. As regrettable as a mistake is, failing to correct it would be even worse.

And to cement that promise to you, this year we vow to run each and every correction on the front page of the paper, regardless of where it originally ran. Don’t think for a minute that we plan to bury corrections in the nether regions of the paper. Getting the news is important. Getting it right is more so.

And finally, we need your news.

The two biggest complaints I hear from readers when they talk about The Maroon is that we are “ignoring” some aspect of the community and acting with a bias. Many people believe we have some conspiracy to print only the bad news and that we are willfully ignoring the good things that are happening.

Let me stand here and now to tell you that is not the case.

We have no intention of ignoring any aspect of our community out of bias, bigotry or preconceived notions. Doing so would be unethical, and will not be tolerated.

Why would we cover one thing and ignore another? Well, there are two main reasons for that.

The primary reason is that simply, we did not know about it. This is where you, the reader, come in. If you know something is happening on campus that deserves coverage, help us out. Give us a call. Drop us an e-mail. Send us a press release. Just let us know.

We can’t cover an event or an award or a trend that we didn’t know about.

Now, that is not to say that we will not print more negative news than positive news. But that is because of the very definition of news.

If things are going as planned, unfortunately that is not news. If you are doing your job properly, that is not news. That is expected. News is the extraordinary. News is the exception. News is surprising. Let’s just hope that things going right in your neck of the woods is not so unusual that it rises to the point of being news.

But, when things are going extraordinarily well, that’s news. And that is what we need to know about.

So help us out, Loyola. We are excited about this year, and as a community, we are ready to make some great news together.

Michael Giusti is Maroon adviser and an instructor of journalism.