Dear Editor–

As a past reporter and editor-in-chief of the Houstonian, I excitedly picked one up this last weekend while visiting Sam Houston with some of my high school students. I was looking forward to the ever changing design and coverage of the paper, but I must confess I was very surprised by the current content. Over half of your paper contains Associated Press stories. WHY? Several pages contained only AP stories and two of the four front page stories were from the Associated Press. Is there nothing going on at Sam Houston? Is there nothing going on in Huntsville? Is there nothing going on in the lives of college students?

When I worked for the newspaper from 2000-2002, we did not subscribe to the Associated Press. Many nights we raced around trying to fill up 10-12 pages, but we did it–without help from AP. One of the reasons we felt our paper was so successful was because it was created completely by Bearkats. We sure did not have over half of our articles written for us.

As a college journalist, the experience I received working for the Houstonian was immeasurable. I encourage many of my current high school students to attend Sam Houston because the hands on experience I received in the communications department was wonderful. Are there no college students to write articles for the newspaper? Do you no longer have journalism classes where students must contribute to the paper? Do your professors and advisors believe it is acceptable to use so many AP stories? I appreciate you wanting to inform students about state, national and world news. However, there are ways to write these stories with a local angle. Ask Dr. Fullerton how it can be done.

I read the Houston Chronicle or get online to read stories from the Associated Press.

The Houstonian is Sam Houston’s newspaper–the articles should be written by Sam Houston students.

Sincerely,

Amee Allen

Class of 2002