At the risk of coming off as a self-indulgent, student newspaper editor suffering from delusions of grandeur, I would like to use my last column to talk about the importance of newspapers in general, as well as the Northern Star in particular.

Before I started working at the Star, I probably had the same approach to reading it as most of you. I would skim headlines, peruse the police blotter and fold up the paper to work on the puzzles in class.

When I began working in the newsroom as a columnist, however, I started to realize how important the Star was in connecting students to the NIU community. Sure, many of us do not care about Sycamore City Council, but for those select few who do, the Star staff does everything it can to cover the meetings on a weekly basis.

More importantly, when tragedy hits, like it did last semester with the death of NIU student Toni Keller, local news outlets like the Star are the only place to turn to for the updates and details that help the community come together and try to make sense of such an incident.

To hammer home that last point, consider this: For six consecutive days after the catastrophic earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan, editors at the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun, the daily paper for the city of Ishinomaki, worked without electricity, finding news stories and scribbling them down on poster paper with only the aid of flashlights and marker pens to post them up at relief centers. Now, seven of the original copies are on display at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. as a “powerful testament to the timeless human need to know and to journalists’ commitment to providing that information.”

Obviously, this type of heroic dedication is specific to such catastrophic events and to compare it to anything involving less severe circumstances would be doing it a disservice. But I would like to point out a microcosmic instance of dedication that happened this semester with the Star. When all of NIU and most of DeKalb was shut down due to the worst blizzard in recent memory, the Northern Star staff came to work, reported the news, posted online and still managed to deliver the paper.

During my brief, semester-long stint as perspective editor, I have had the pleasure of receiving and reading your letters to the editor. While much of the criticism is constructive and essential in letting us know where we can improve, there is also a pervasive sense of cynicism in a lot of the letters.

Granted, the Northern Star is not The New York Times. But I also think it is important to realize that it is a job that allows students to hone their craft in the most professional manner possible before actually entering the journalism profession. You wouldn’t eat at a restaurant run by culinary arts students and expect a five-star meal (especially if it was free).

Also, it seems like there is a misconception that the Star is just the media mouthpiece of NIU. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, the Star is a fully functional newspaper, working autonomously from the university and paying its rent and employees with the money acquired by selling advertising space to local businesses. In fact, the Star often acts as a watchdog for NIU (see: our coverage of the abuse of the Late Night Ride Service, or our listing of NIU’s top moneymakers on Friday’s cover).

Many see the newspaper industry as one that is approaching its extinction as we increasingly rely on digital media. I honestly think it is far too important for that to ever happen. Before you dismiss this column as some sort of long-winded, self-serving rant and move on to the sudoku, take a second to think about the fact that newspapers like the Star report on local news stories that affect their readers, distribute them to individuals and, in doing so, cultivate a community.