We here on the blog have been feeling that lately we’ve been losing some focus. With more boisterous and demanding readership, an election campaign, and fewer (non-graduating) writers, the pressure (and temptation) to spit out easy personality-centered posts is hard to resist. This is an attempt to step back and re-balance. Though it may not be in your face, this blog is and has always been based on a certain type of philosophy, which goes beyond reporting news, or having a personal pulpit. By creating this mission statement, we’re laying out the values and goals we aspire to with our blog. We hope that it will give both ourselves and our readers clear(ish) expectations of our journalism, and our community here on the blog. We hope that by laying out these expectations and aspirations, we’ll help ourselves live up to them, and help you understand the place we’re coming from. Bear in mind that this exercise is somewhat platonic – this is a chair in the sky – but this is the chair we’ll be trying to approximate, though we may not always make it.
Our Mission:
- To use our experience, networks, and knowledge base to empower UBC students to educate themselves about campus and university affairs. We will present issues, deliver background as clearly as possible, and use those issues as springboards for open discussion.
- To be inclusive. We will strive to engage as many students as possible and invite our fellow university community members to participate in discussion that is relevant to them.
- To thoroughly discuss the issues themselves and where people fit into them rather than the other way around.
- To provide intelligent and insightful commentary and perspectives on issues relating to UBC and the UBC community.
- To create a lively and respectful forum for debate and discussion of campus and higher education issues
Our Values:
- The balance of facts in concert with perspective; the understanding that this balance is fine but adjustable.
- Respect and trust in each other.
- Refusing to obliterate our unique voices and positionalities (or those of our readers) in pseudo-objective conceits.
- The assumption of the intelligence of our readers.
- Accessibility to UBC’s complete student body
- due diligence with facts and source checking.
Our philosophy:
Think of our blog as broccoli: it may not be the most attractive and appealing food, but damn if it’s not good for you and ultimately delicious. While we may have named ourselves the “insiders,” we do not subscribe to the duality of in/out; we recognize the value of different brands of involvement unlike our own. Relating items from the weekly news-cycle to longer term issues is a priority. Gossip will be minimal, but juicy when we do run it. The AMS is not the centre of the universe. Our posts will be accessible on several levels of previous knowledge. The spirit of investigation and depth of analysis are important to us. We write what we’re interested in, without presumptions of doing everything and satisfying everyone.
Cool site. And very helpful comments.
Here's some un-invited advice because I can't help myself! Take care to continue to ensure your team enjoys shared clarity & consensus on what you are truly trying to achieve, and that everyone takes personal responsibility for doing their specific part to ensure your mission and values are kept front and centre. – They should become everyone's 'internal yardstick' for doing the right thing.
Your opening statement is a great start, though, from my perspective you have mushed your Mission & Values statement together with what I call your Core Strategies to pull off your Mission. This isn't just a matter of 'strategy-speak' jargon or semantics.
I fear you may find this 'mushing together' of organizational concepts may make it difficult to help everyone a) stay focused on mission (not sure what it is exactly), and b) figure out how to evaluate how you're doing – which helps you constantly improve as you go. (You may count more and more readers and writers as a measure of success, but how will you know if your blog is bringing true value to the world?)
Obviously, don't take my word for it, but just keep these thoughts in mind as you keep up the fabulous exploratory work… you are going to learn as much about organizing a social-profit collaborative effort as you are about the issues you write about.
Wish I would have done something like this at your age… heh. Even without a blogosphere!
All the best – Wendy Bradley