“The Centurion,” the award-winning newspaper of Bucks County Community College, is back in print for the first time since March of 2020 when the College was first shut down because of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
The Centurion is back and better than ever since the forced shutdown caused by the Covid-19 outbreak in March 2020. The lockdown of the college forced the printers to run cold, leaving news boxes empty and stopping the Centurion from publishing for the student community.
“At the time everyone thought we’d be away for just a few weeks,” Tony Rogers, a professor and the journalism coordinator at BCCC, explained. “Obviously, there was no reason to print the paper when no one was on campus.”
When the two-week break soon turned into a months-long nightmare, everyone including Rogers realized “how wrong we were.”
Nonetheless, the Centurion staff continued to report the news to the public by putting the stories on PDFs that were emailed to students and faculty members.
“I’m very proud of the Centurion staff who kept putting out the paper even during the darkest days of the pandemic. Even when some other student clubs became inactive during this period, the Centurion never missed a beat,” Rogers expressed.
The Centurion is a completely student-run organization and club. The staff is composed of club members from various academic fields and students who are taking journalism courses at BCCC.
While the Centurion staff had high hopes for their return to campus last year, they were instead faced with various problems. “First, I spent months searching for a printer whose services we could afford since prices have been increasing recently,” Rogers explained.
As the Centurion is completely student-run, it is also the only club at BCCC that is financially self-sufficient. “Advertising revenue dropped pretty dramatically this past year, and I was worried that we’d empty out our savings if we resumed printing when so little revenue was coming in’’ added Rogers.
Due to unforeseen troubles, the staff continued to lay out their stories on PDFs to email them out as students and staff returned to in-person classes again. This was the case until recently when the first issue was distributed on campus on Feb. 9.
“Also, we have a crackerjack editor-in-chief at the moment, Max Mower, who I know is up to the challenge of doing this,” Rogers enthusiastically responds.
Mower has taken on her new challenging role and helps lead and inspire the other writers and staff members.
While the newspaper staff is happy to be back in the press the general public has mixed reactions to the physical paper versus the digital version. Many ask, “Why print when no one uses paper anymore?”
“My answer is that on the professional level, hundreds of newspapers across the country continue printing because they still get a fair bit of revenue from doing so,” Rogers clarifies.
“That means there are still jobs out there for people who can do the kind of graphic design and layout required for a newspaper as long as that’s the case we will keep printing the Centurion because we’re providing students with the training they need if they want to do those kinds of jobs” Rogers added.
The new editor-in-chief holds staff meetings every Thursday at 12:30 p.m. in the journalism newsroom at Rollins Center 127. Students can come and hang out while snacking on pizza as they work on editing stories, pitching new story ideas, and laying the graphic designs out of the newspaper.
Sincerely from the Centurion staff … it’s good to be back.