A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the back of the TV studio in the Communications Department and smiling.

I was there for the weekly Castleton Spartan newspaper meeting, and I was smiling because there were 18 students in there with me. 

Again, this was a meeting of the school newspaper and of the 18 students there, only four were receiving course credit for being there.

So, despite my subpar math skills, even I know that 14 students had showed up at the meeting because they WANTED to be there to contribute to The Castleton Spartan.

I’ve been attending weekly meetings with the newspaper staff since 2005, and I don’t recall ever having such a packed room. 

There have been meetings with only a handful of students, with all getting elective credits for being there.

That’s what made this day so special for me, hence the smile. 

But it wasn’t a fluke. 

Subsequent meetings have seen consistent double-digit numbers of students packing the room also. And remember, we’re in a time in history where newspapers are struggling, right?

They’re dying, right?

Teens get their news from social media feeds like Instagram and TikTok and local news from YikYak, not newspapers or newspaper sites. 

So, how do we explain this enthusiasm at the weekly Spartan meetings? 

There are some who probably need content for their capstone portfolios, but there are also a lot of first-year students who seem to be having fun sharing their stories and columns about everything from the the joy of playing music with a twin sibling to hope for a Mets World Series.

And what is intriguing a bit to me is there are numerous students who aren’t even communications majors. We have business majors, English majors, even psychology majors. 

Maybe it’s the status of the world we live in right now that is drawing them in.

Maybe it’s their peers, who are having fun working on the paper and are luring others in to join them.

Maybe it’s the lure of the byline. 

They get published once and love that feeling and want to get it again.

I can relate.

I still enjoy looking up my old Spartan clips from when I was a student in Professor Terry Dalton’s classes in the late 1980s. I also vividly remember getting published for the first time in The Rutland Herald and I still have the clip in a scrapbook.

I love the momentum of The Castleton Spartan and I love that the print version of it is widely read in the area, thanks in part to the delivery efforts of local resident Rich Byrne, who takes copies into West Rutland and Rutland every other week for no compensation.

I deliver them too, throughout Castleton, including huge stacks at the Dollar General store that are always gone when I return in two weeks. 

I drop them at the post office, the diner, the bakery, the deli, Third Place, the hair salon, the Senior Center and the Mobil. Students help deliver them all over campus and on the day they come out, it does my heart good to see open newspapers shielding faces in classrooms or in lobbies.

Students in my Community Journalism class are further having an impact on local journalism having produced over 30 stories for area news outlets including VTDigger, Rutland Herald, Mountain Times, Lakes Region Free Press and Poultney Journal. Some have even garnered front-page coverage. 

Having lived through the high times of journalism – before the internet – I’m not delusional in thinking we’ll be returning to that impact. But I can tell you I am savoring the involvement and impact VTSU Castleton students are having on the region now and I am loving seeing a full room of interested students working to keep that impact going.

– David Blow 

Advisor of The Castleton Spartan