Media on the Gustavus campus has come a long way. Simply by holding this newspaper in your hands, you have joined a Gustavus tradition that stretches back decades to the first college publication, printed in the spring of 1891.
Admittedly, a few things have changed since then. For starters, the dorms are now co-ed, the college isn’t solely run out of Old Main and THE WEEKLY is no longer the student body’s only source of news and media entertainment produced by fellow students.
Since 1891, new organizations have developed and students can now delve into a variety of media options including GAC-TV, KGSM Radio, the Yearbook, Firethorne, Heterodoxy and, of course, THE WEEKLY.
Over time, media at Gustavus has evolved. “The internet has changed media,” said Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas said.
Thomas graduated from Gustavus with the class of 2000. While enrolled, he was a sports writer for THE WEEKLY, and now is responsible for representing Gustavus in the media.
“When I was a freshman here, e-mail was still a relatively new thing. People used to watch the 10 p.m. news and read the paper in the morning, and that’s how they got their news,” he said.
“Thinking of all the technology changes in the field of communications in my lifetime is astounding,” Assistant Vice President for College Relations Stacia Vogel said.
“In the twenty years I’ve been a professional communicator I’ve seen the advent of the Internet, personal computers, digital camera equipment …and more.”
Despite the changes that these and other technological advancements have catalyzed, some things remain the same.One of these is the Gustavus student body, Vogel said, which still consists of, “hard-working, dedicated students who want to serve their campus community … and debate the issues.”
The impact of technological developments on the Gustavus campus has enabled all forms of media to develop and change. It has altered the way print publications are created, and groups like GAC-TV and KGSM Radio are capable of doing far more than was previously possible.
Last year, KGSM Radio broadcasted their first podcast of the Kaleb and Stephen Show, hosted by Junior Economics Major Stephen Titcombe and Junior Psychology Major Kaleb Rumicho.
In addition, Senior Political Science and Communication Studies Major Siddarth Selvaraj and Senior Communication Studies Major Matt Fillmore completed GAC-TV’s third documentary this year entitled Bangalamerica, about the American influence in Bangalore, India.
Junior Communication Studies and Political Science Major Greg Boone is the general manager of KGSM Radio. He says that the Gustavus media community is not quite as active as he would prefer. “I’d say there’s a trend towards a more active Gustavus media activity,” he said, “and I hope that’s true.”
GAC TV
According to Director of Editorial Services Steve Waldhauser, Gustavus’ first television station started in the late 1960s. First named GML-TV, after Gustavus Media Laboratories (the title of media services at the time) the station started after a TV station donated outdated camera equipment. “There was a studio at one time in the basement of Norelius Hall,” Waldhauser said, “but the whole operation went defunct within a few years as equipment broke down.”
In 2005, GAC-TV was revived under the efforts of Senior Communication Studies and Political Science Major Siddarth Selvaraj and Senior Communication Studies Major Matt Fillmore. “We really saw the need for hands-on work in the field of film and video journalism, which we didn’t have the opportunity to do here on campus,” Selvaraj said. “It started with a small group of students who are incredibly enthusiastic but with no professional training.” Since 2005, GAC-TV has produced three documentaries and a news show that airs before campus movies on the weekends.
“I think GAC-TV will be around for a long time,” said Junior Communication Studies Major Katie Mason, another member of GAC-TV. “For students who want to head into television broadcasting after Gustavus, GAC-TV can be a big stepping stone.”
KGSM Radio
According to Waldhauser, KGSM started as an underground student operation called KGAC in the late 1960’s. They started out using primitive equipment and,“broadcasting from a dorm room in fourth-floor North,” said Waldhauser. “The range of the signal was not much farther than [Complex], although on a good day you could hear it in Uhler.”
Today, the radio station broadcasts from a room in the Dive and streams online, so anyone on campus and off can listen. “People like to look at the radio station and say that since we don’t have a transmitter, we are somehow sub par to other college stations,” said Junior Political Science Major Greg Boone. “[But] if you survey the campus, I would guess that most students don’t have a radio in their dorm room.” Boone said.
With or without a transmitter, KGSM is no longer the underground station it once was. KGSM recently purchased new equipment and hopes to produce more journalism shows in addition to live talk and music shows. “We might not be perfect,” Boone said. “I think there’s a lot of ways we could improve,” he said. “[But] I think [other college campuses] they would find that we’re
doing something different.”
The Weekly
The Gustavian Weekly is the longest-running form of media on campus and has appeared in various forms since and under different titles since 1891.
Assistant Vice President for College Relations Stacia Vogel was the faculty advisor of The Weekly from 1990 to 2002. By the time she started working for The Weekly, “newspapers were no longer created using lead-press letters,” but they still did things differently than today. “[We used] paper and heated wax to create the story galleys and lined tape for boxes and borders.”
Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas, who graduated with the class of 2000, worked for The Weekly. He remembers the process of laying out the paper as being tedious. “We had to cut the stories out and use an Exacto knife, and we had to glue them exactly straight on the layout,” he said. “On average, we were there until three in the morning,” he said.
Today The Weekly is completely digital; photographs are digital and the newspaper is created with the computer program Adobe InDesign. Technology may change the method of printing a newspaper, but, “The main tenants of thecraft of journalism have stayed the same,” said Vogel. “It’s about … telling a relevant story that’s fair, accurate, timely, and objective.”
Interested in checking out more media from the past? Copies of The Firethorne and Heterodoxy are also available on campus. Thanks to the Gustavus Archive Office, you can find digital versions of THE WEEKLY on-line from 1980 to present. The original editions of all copies of THE WEEKLY are available in the Archive’s Office in the Folke Bernadette Memorial Library. THE WEEKLY would like to thank College Archivist Jeff Jenson for his assistance.