The first and only ODE newspaper is the ODE Owl. Run by Danny Amador, Oscar Caudell, and myself, the ODE Owl is a student run newspaper for everything ODE.
One thing that many students noticed in the first week of this session was that there was no ODE Owl coming out. And then the next week there was no paper coming out, nor the week after that. Why has it not started back up? What’s causing the problem? Will it even continue? And if it does, will it address the issues from last year?
“The ODE Owl is fantastic and a great addition to the community.” This is a quote from director Jenny Ginter which was one of the many helpful words spoken to us that helped get the paper from an idea to reality. Sadly, ever since then, our little idea has hit a few bumps.
Luckily I can offer some inside info on what these ‘bumps’ were. The main causes for the delay or setback in printing is miscommunication between the three editors (which I happen to be one of), problems from last year rolled over into this session, and that the chief advisor, Valerie Criminger left ODE, leaving the paper without it’s main advisor.
So what caused the miscommunication between the editors? While the main source of this specific issue was not having a strict process in which each article had to go through. And since the chief editor was set up to change every week, one would have a strict long process in which an article must pass certain requirements and another would use a totally different order of things.
Next was the problems from last year that just rolled over into the new session. These included technical problems like no specific look of the paper, no set fonts, and also no set text sizes. Then there was the problem of not agreeing on certain concepts. What would happen is that the editors would not agree on certain aspects which then forced the chief editor of the week to decide on it by himself so that a paper could even come out that week.
That brings us to the third problem of the paper’s advisor leaving. Sadly our main advisor decided to not return to ODE for the 2019-2020 school year. This in turn left the ODE Owl with one of it’s main foundations. Ms. Criminger would not only help with proofreading articles, but also help by giving quotes, supplying the Owl with teachers opinions, and giving us info and what major events were coming up.
To answer what’s probably the biggest ODE Owl related question is yes, the paper is going to start back up and possibly by the time this is published it may already be in print. The ODE Owl is planning to kick of this years papers with a special edition “Summer News.” This version is hoping to be a super-sized version of the normal paper whilst mostly revolving around everything that has happened in the first few weeks and covering the ODE related events that happened during the summer.
Lastly, this brings us to the final change. The paper is once again changing it’s schedule. The new way of how it will work is that the second week of every month the ODE Owl will come out with a physical, in print version of the paper. Then on the last week of that same month the paper will come out with a digital copy of a brand new issue.
That brings us to the end. Hopefully this article has helped bring light to these issues and by the time this is published the “Summer News” edition may have already come out. If you would like to contact any of the ODE Owl editors you can reach them at odeowlnews@gmail.com and visit their website at odeowl.wixsite.com/paper