It has begun
Wow. That is really all I can say about the launch of Substance on Medium. Let me back it up real quick for those who do not know what that is. My name is Albert, I am the former Editor-in-chief of my college newspaper, the Mountaineer, at Mt. San Antonio College. The school is one of the largest community colleges in California and has an amazing journalism program. We have won numerous awards for our print newspaper and magazine, as well as for our news site Mountiewire.com. The crappy part however is the lack of commitment to news and journalism that’s been going on the past couple of years. The staff, including myself, has really stopped caring about the newspaper. Why should we care if the students for whom we write don’t care? But that’s where things changed.
Our professor, Toni Albertson, was able to make a connection with the amazing people over at Medium and in a unanimous decision we moved our newsroom online. From here on out we are creating stories for Substance, the former name of our magazine, through Medium to showcase groundbreaking college journalism.
Now the launch. Nothing has stressed or terrified me as much as going public so to speak with this project. It may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people who don’t understand college journalism, all they see is a new collection on Medium. But it’s really a big deal. Not only are we the only college to have a partnership on this level, but we are also only publishing the best of the best. Oh and people who don’t contribute or fuck up are done. Like they can’t write for us (insert Mean Girls gif.)
We launched six stories Friday, and the response has been insane. The story I wrote about gay Latinos and the machismo culture has already made nearly 12K hits. That is more than all the hits we’ve had on Mountiewire. Ever. The only story that came close was about TMZ and that had 800.
Needless to say that’s not it. The other stories we published are of the top caliber, they rock. It’s crazy inspiring to see the hard work that the staff has been putting in. They are staying late, not by obligation but by choice. Who does that?
For a guy who’s been writing for a print paper for some time, it’s refreshing to get a whole new crew that is passionate about what they are doing. There is no bickering or shit-talking; just a collective drive to be the best.
I spent the weekend looking at analytics of our collection, and just seeing what happened in three days reignites that fire in my chest to tell the stories that need to be heard. It’s a lot of work, I haven’t had a lot of sleep, coffee is fueling my day-to-day class obligations, but I couldn’t be happier. Some may call me insane for doing this, some may say to drop the habit but I can’t. Substance is more than that. It’s not just another bad habit.
Albert