Editor's Note (9/30/08)

Story by Carson Vaughan 

| Published Sep 30, 2008

Four months. Five Issues. One semester down.

Last Feb. 17 marked the inaugural issue of the Dailyer Nebraskan, and today marks the beginning of a fresh and unsullied semester of satire; the second volume of a collective student effort to diminish, at times demolish, and—at the very least—reassess the traditions that stagnate our culture on countless levels.

Daily Nebraskan editor-in-chief Brian Hernandez wrote articulately and powerfully in the Aug. 21, 2008, issue of the DN that as he steps up to lead the newsroom in new directions, he follows “107 pairs of large footsteps, the traces left from more than a century’s worth of editors-in-chief who came before me at the Daily Nebraskan.”

The Daily Nebraskan moves forward with confidence, if not comfort, knowing that if it slips, more than 100 years of establishment will be there to catch it.

Establishment is not a luxury the Dailyer Nebraskan may rely on; in stark contrast, the semester-old Dailyer Nebraskan uses humor to question the validity of those original foundations.

We question the skeptics and remain skeptical about the established questions.

We are both a member of the press and a watchdog over the press. We Bob Woodward the Carl Bernsteins.

And our weapons of choice remain the Jonathon Swift, the Mark Twain, The Onion. Satire.

Last March, following a year in which less than 3.4 percent of the student body voted in the ASUN elections, the Dailyer Nebraskan asked what a turnover of ASUN officials—nearly synonymous with Greek System officials—actually meant for students at UNL.

In March, the Dailyer questioned the rapid consumption of UNL’s campus greenspace and later viciously typecast UNL’s East Campus students as degenerate, ignorant hillbillies, solely because we thought it was funny.

And it was.

The Dailyer Nebraskan is the student reader’s alternative.

Read us for a petty laugh, a witty insight, a brutal generalization made in the name of reckless disregard for journalistic integrity but conscious obedience to the truth.

If public high schools are the birthplace of democracy, colleges are increasingly becoming the home of your childhood pastor-parented friend: still allowing you to jump on the trampoline but not allowed to ask questions about the Old Testament without returning home silent and baptized.

It is our belief that a healthy university breeds constructive controversy. Positive controversy.

The Dailyer Nebraskan hopes to keep you laughing, questioning and stirring the pot.

We hold no qualms about testing and tampering with those long-held traditions that dam the river of ideas flowing inherently and meanderingly through a public university.

We’re here to catalyze change, promote the metastasis of activism beyond the confines of campus and question the superfluous nature of this very sentence.

Please join us.


Respectfully-er,


Carson Vaughan
Editor-in-Chief
Dailyer Nebraskan