If you were planning to blog about the maneater...

The Maneater is the student run newspaper published on Tuesdays and Fridays. The paper, which varies in quality and seriousness depending on whoever happens to be editing it at the time, is usually the first proving ground for young, fresh-faced writers and photographers looking to get some quick experience and a few dollars.

The Maneater actually dates back to 1955 when Joel Gold, a sociology student, and Jim Willard took over the Missouri Student. Gold renamed the paper to reflect its new independent and fierce perspective of campus news. As Gold famously said of the Student, “The name Missouri Student reflected the editorial policy of the former paper quite well. It signified nothing.”

In the 53 years since Gold and Willard bought the student newspaper from the Delta Upsilon fraternity, the paper has famously been distributed free of charge and looked down upon by most of the faculty at the Missouri School of Journalism. Despite this antipathy, the university has always provided spaces for newsstands in halls across campus and given them room for offices in Brady Commons and McReynolds Hall.

The Maneater’s official slogan is “You've been warned.” This well reflects the papers sometimes terrible writing and editing staff. When working with kids who had never written for a newspaper before, and editors that work from 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. twice a week, many errors are bound to occur.

Despite this, the paper has received numerous awards from state and national organizations, including ACP Pacemaker awards, Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards and Missouri College Media Association Better Newspaper Contest awards. Not too bad for a paper that is written by freshmen and sophomores who aren’t in the j-school and designed and edited by a full of staff of insomniacs.

From my experience, most of the editors and staff at the 'eater are dedicated, overworked, and hopelessly optimistic about their paper. The writers are constantly improving themselves, and hopeful about their future with the school of journalism.

The whole "fishwrapper" image is tagged on the paper with some justification as editing errors are quite common, the opinion section is filled with boring collumns and cookie cutter thoughts on the standard political issues, and the arts section thinks they are edgy because they publish curse words.

As The Columbia Missourian, the gold standard of student print journalism here at Mizzou, continues to hemorrhage money, the world's best school for journalism might be looking at a future where the Maneater is the only newspaper on campus.

Let’s all pray that doesn’t happen.