The Newsweek（小世界周報）is a compulsory course for senior students of the Department of Journalism in Shih Hsin University. Students are divided into four position, there are chief editors, editors, conveners（召集人）and reporters. Every student should not only take his/her own role but also has to cooperate with the others. First, in order to decide issues which reporters will start to gather information and prepare interview,a meeting before editing（編前會）will be held on every Monday. Second, the manuscripts will becorrected after three procedures. Third, editors will set types on every Wednesday.
Each Wednesday is a workday（上機日）when editors of every page are gathered to arrange newspapers. Editors will choose and adjust news photos after conveners make sure the press releases have been double checked. After that, it’s time to take a crucial step,“arrangement.” Editors will print the first arranged draft with black and white and hand it over to an instructor. According to instructor’s suggestions, editors should correct shortcomings and print again the revised news pages with color and give it to the instructor for a double check. After all these procedures have been completed, editors can present the final version of news arrangements with electronic files to chief editors. They should oversee all the pages and decide which one could be the front-page news, and they also need to check any other arranged details such as color matching in page and font style on such busy Wednesday. Once all the editors finish their work, these arranged files will be sent to the printing plant to complete the final step. Eventually, a latest newspapers of Newsweek is produced.
On Friday, chief editors sort and bind the latest newspapers which are just sent by print plant, waiting for all interns of Newsweek including editors, conveners and reporters to receive a certain amount of newspapers for the delivery（派報）.
The Introspection and Expectation of SHU Newsweek
The Shih Hsin University Newsweek has been published for a long time. It reports news of the whole Wenshan district. As time goes on, the issues should be more visible and easy to get for the local residents nearby. Chin-Tung Liao（廖欽銅）,the head of Shiyuan neighborhood（試院里）,emphasizes that the news students write should be connected with the community.
When newspapers are delivered to his office, Liao usually browses through some headlines rapidly. “Asfor the detailed content, I only pay attention to something related to the local area,” Liao said. How to allocate things happening in each district on each page is not an easy work. “Though Shih Hsin University is close to Shiyuan neighborhood, the pieces of news about us are fewer,” Liao mentioned in doubt. However, a piece of news relies on its effectiveness to convey an information that people can resonate with, so people would like to read it and feel they are being cared by the society.
Rainie Tsai（蔡品虹）, a senior student of the Department of English in Shih Hsin University, said “I would like to read about food safety problems and learn some health knowledge, and it is better to know them from SHU Newsweek.” She also mentioned the issues covered in this weekly were miscellaneous, but the finance and economy section was too difficult to understand. Zong-Yi Lee（李宗益）, a loyal reader of SHU Newsweek, thought it was great to get all information needed in this newspaper. He advised, “The content could be more positive.” Newspaper is not only a tool to find out the problems in our society, it can actually encourage people to see the problems and try to solve them.
“Not many reports of news in the SHU Newsweek mentioned about our school,” Chih-ching Hsu（許誌清）, the director of Xinhe elementary school（新和國小） directly stated. He suggests Newsweek should have special columns with contents depicted by simple words for elementary students and it is better to have the translation behind the article that will help them learn English.
From the other perspective, teachers think that the newspaper is not too hard, but it only focuses on certain “target readers.” Jason Su（蘇荐紳）, the teacher in Xinhe elementary school thought that the original intention of Newsweek does not target on readers of children. For elementary students, newspaper like Mandarin Daily News（國語日報）is easier and insightful to read since phonetic notations are used to help them understand articles and global issues as well.
“The headlines of the newspaper sometimes are not that attractive, but I feel attracted to the newspaper on the table of the breakfast store in the morning. Maybe SHU Newsweek can improve that in the future.” said Yi-jin Ke（柯苡均）, a gas station co-worker near the local Xindian district.
Despite Newsweek has some limitations and little foibles, Chen-Ju Fang（陳菊芳，見左圖二）, who looks over borough chiefs office every day, stated that she really admires Newsweek productions. “I usually watch CNN to improve my English ability, and I think Newsweek English column features various news topic that are informative and educational just like CNN to me,” Chen complimented. “Maybe the English sections could extend more columns in the future to make it better,” she told the reporters.
Other borough chiefs also gave opinions on Newsweek. “We would like to see students combine their creation with issues of local areas,” said Liao Lin Liang-yu（廖林良玉，見左圖一）, the down town borough chief. “Articles tabout our community should also be mentioned more if possible,” she suggested.
Newsweek is typically a ten-section, 20-page paper. What makes it tick is that all the hardships and effort are from every junior student in the Department of Journalism in Shih-Hsin Universities. The team work very hard and dedicate themselves to make the news environment a better place.
The Priceless Newsweek Run by Students
Newsweek is a school weekly that provides a platform for students who study in Journalism to utilize what they’ve learned and experienced into the actual process of news writing and editing. As mentioned above, we’ve gathered a lot of opinions from people who told us what they expect to read, and we shall make some improvements in different dimensions.
Gini Kuei（桂曉珺）, a junior student who had been an intern in Newsweek English World said, “I really appreciate what I learned from the work at Newsweek, because it made me understand what media workers do every day. However, some outdated rules of Newsweek may finally diminish students’ creativity and motivation.” She feels frustrated that she can’t make news in ways she prefers.
Kuei also stated, “The way to decide who will be editors and conveners is really strange. They just played rock-paper-scissors! How ridiculous is that they decide these important roles randomly instead of examining each candidate’ ability.” She thought some administrators feel they are superior to other teammates in Newsweek. They can’t accept reporters’ opinions, and they want reporters to obey them absolutely. However, reporters, editors and conveners in Newsweek are all junior students, and administrators need to work with them together rather than to control reporters with unnecessary superiority.
Newsweek should change some rules to meet the current trend and provide an ideal space for students to experience their internship. As Taiwan’s media now is almost managed in Capitalism, a none-profit media which is run by students is really precious. Newsweek should take the advantage of this and value students’ creativity, and cultivate better media workers for a better future.
