The first sentence of the Daily Cal’s mission statement is as follows: “The Daily Californian exists and functions to provide an opportunity for the students of the University of California to receive training in journalism and all aspects of newspaper production.”

We take this role seriously. There is no undergraduate journalism program here at UC Berkeley, as Stephen wrote about earlier when introducing the Daily Cal DeCal, but that doesn’t mean there is no demand. The Journalism School offered five freshmen or sophomore seminars this semester, with spots for fewer than 100 students. We had enough interest in the Daily Cal DeCal to fill more than double our original capacity of 40 students.

But what makes us qualified to teach journalism? While the Daily Cal as an institution has been around since 1871, our most experienced editors have only been around for three or four years and may have no professional training experience. At the Daily Cal we treat this training as more of a cooperative experience. No one, in any position, pretends they know everything about their jobs, and we regularly seek out expert advice.

Thanks to rapid changes in the journalism industry, as detailed in this 2007 report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the situation for new journalists in our generation is unique. On the one hand, investment in newsrooms is at a low, with fewer reporters hired in the larger metropolitan areas. But on the other hand newsrooms are looking for people who can use multimedia technology with their reporting.

At the Daily Cal, we are poised to offer the best of both worlds. By maintaining the highest journalistic standards while encouraging the use of new media, we will be able to offer future employers the best possible package.

As former Daily Cal editor in chief Adeel Iqbal was known for stressing, our employees are “student-journalists. ‘Student’ comes first.” Our goal will always be to provide you with the finest quality journalism, but our mission is education. By grounding our writers, photographers, designers and editors in the traditional basics of reporting, we hope that as the industry changes, our staffers will bring the best qualities and shape the new face of the press.

Popularity: 18%