Editorial

On Sunday nights, while you desperately cling to the final fleeting moments of your weekend, we here at The Concordian also begin a race against time. We sit in our office under the fluorescent glare of our computer screens and type away. We let ideas and information enter our minds and grow and change and push and pull until they fill our pages.
By Tuesday morning we often start to wonder if it was worth the struggle. Does the information we work so hard to collect and treat with objectivity and fairness reach you, or does it die there, meaningless blots of inks sitting in big wooden boxes.
In the final moments we question whether we’re simply a relic of the past. Whether it’s true nobody reads newspapers anymore. Whether anyone cares. This week we got our answer. You are reading.
In our last issue we found ourselves facing a challenging reality as journalists, the contentious conflict in Gaza. We covered the demonstration that filled our city’s streets with outrage, we tracked the history and we debated.
Then the letters and phone calls began pouring in. Thanks for being unbiased, criticism for leaning too far to one side. Some said we were too pro-Israeli, others too pro-Palestinian. In one e-mail a reader asked whether we had made the right choice in publishing a picture of a burning flag on our cover. She argued we were promoting hatred instead of promoting peace efforts.
As journalists we are asked to provide the reader with balanced information, so they can make their own choices. Anything more would be insulting. A picture of a burning flag, words devoted to death and conflict, it might not be happy or easy, but it’s true. It’s a testament to a sometimes sad and thought-provoking reality.
These letters, phone calls and e-mails, they are proof we have not yet reached irreversible apathy. They are a clear confirmation our readers care enough to reach out and make their voices heard. They are ready to fight for their ideas regarding for the most part the plight of people who they have never met, who live in a land they have never visited.
Such passion for justice, for righteousness is the very core of human intellect. When we can debate and argue and use our words and art to discuss such difficult issues, it is a sign we are moving in the right direction.
And so it was worth taking the risk and exposing our integrity to your scrutiny. We might have lost the respect of some, but we have gained infinite admiration for you, the reader.