This issue has recently come to my concern, and I feel the need to clarify to readers of The Knight Crier some basic facts about our content. First of all, The Knight Crier isn’t and has never been affiliated with a specific political party. This should go without saying, but it is a school newspaper, not a political machine.

In the national news, some media sources tend to lean left or lean right, but The Knight Crier Newspaper does not have a bias either way. Yes, everyone naturally has their own bias, but our staff is not taught or forced to lean one way or another.

In the Opinion section of our newspaper, writers have the opportunity to write editorial pieces on virtually any topic they choose. These articles are accordingly published in the Opinion section, and many of their headlines begin with the words “EDITORIAL” so that readers know they are reading an opinion. This year, it is true that we have had more opinions that are considered liberal than opinions that are considered conservative in ideology. This is a direct correlation with the students who write opinions on our staff, and obviously does not represent the viewpoint of every student at North Penn. We cannot control how evenly we cover stories in the opinion section because The Knight Crier is an elective, and the types of opinions that are published depends on who chooses to take the class and write them. However, in reality, any student or staff member can write an article and submit it to The Knight Crier if they would like to, since it is a school newspaper.

The Knight Crier does not partake in any censoring of content due to the political or personal beliefs of the editors or adviser. We adhere to the highest standards of journalism when publishing our content. Editors edit articles for grammatical errors and help staff members craft clean pieces to get the writer’s idea across, not their own.

Since we are a school newspaper, we do not report on national news. We report on school events or games because we can physically be on scene conducting interviews, gathering facts, and taking pictures. Whenever we do write about national news, we take an angle, which is different than reporting. That is because our job is not to “break the news”, since we do not have the same resources of other media outlets such as FOX, CNN, or MSNBC. We cannot be on scene around the world, so unless a national news topic is occuring at North Penn or in our community, our journalists cannot necessarily report on it. That is why we encourage our writers to take local or interesting angles on national news stories so that they are relevant to our community or offer a student’s perspective. As for omission of certain news topics, it is not our job to report the news in the first place. We don’t write stories on every occurance in the world, and the lack of opinion pieces on conservative stories is again a direct correlation of the amount of writers who write opinion pieces. Anyone looking for national news coverage should not use The Knight Crier as a resource.

Lastly, our content is largely driven by the staff members who actually want to write. Every week we struggle to get events covered, as we have no way of forcing reporters to produce content. No staff member or editor is a full time journalist, and some are naturally more passionate about writing than others. But since we are an elective class and a student newspaper, as compared to a business that hands out salaries, that is okay and inevitable.

I personally and genuinely want to encourage every student and staff member to submit content to The Knight Crier. Local and national newspapers are not going to publish anything that gets sent to them, but a school newspaper will. There are so many talented writers and interesting opinions at North Penn, and I realize not everyone has the opportunity to be on our staff. However, if you do have the opportunity, I highly recommend that you do take the class. If there is more diversity and passion from the staff, there will be more diversity and passion in the content.