UNOFFICIAL CAMPUS PAPER POKES FUN AT SEMO

The Sprigg Street Gazette won't ever be considered a mouthpiece for Southeast Missouri State University.

The satirical campus newspaper regularly pokes fun at the university administration.

It is one of two student newspapers at Southeast, but unlike the more established and better funded Capaha Arrow newspaper, the Sprigg Street Gazette is less than a year old and operates on a shoestring budget with an unpaid staff.

The newspaper was started by a group of students on the 11th and 12th floors of the Towers South high-rise dormitory along Sprigg Street.

In all, about a dozen students, including some commuter students, have contributed to the publication.

The page layout is done on a student's computer, a process that often lasts through the night.

The Gazette runs few photos, features a magazine-style layout and typically has eight to 12 pages an issue.

The Arrow comes out weekly. The Gazette comes out roughly once a month. The Arrow prints about 6,000 copies of each edition. The Gazette prints about 3,500.

The Gazette doesn't receive any money from the university. Instead it receives funding from The Collegiate Network, a Wilmington, Del.-basd organization that finances 63 independent campus newspapers across the nation.

Like the Arrow, the newspaper is printed by Concord Publishing in Cape Girardeau.

Gazette Editor Melissa Holliday said her paper received a $900 grant from The Collegiate Network last semester and $1,800 this semester.

The paper put out three issues in the fall and has published two issues this semester, including a March issue that came in April. Holliday said two more issues are planned this semester.

Southeast junior James Ganzevoort is the publisher and irreverent ringleader of the Gazette.

He recruited Holliday to serve as editor. A freshman from Ava, Ill., Holliday is a former editor of her high school's yearbook.

Ganzevoort said the students started the Gazette to provide an alternative to the Capaha Arrow, which regularly carries stories outlining the university administration's views.

Ganzevoort said the Gazette doesn't pretend to cover all the news. "In most cases, we start out fairly straight-faced and we kind of digress," he said.

He and Mike Conarroe, one of the Gazette's writers, laughingly comment that the weirdest students live on the top floor of the high-rise residence hall. They would include themselves in that description.

The Gazette's staff includes several math majors. Most are on academic scholarships.

The Gazette's tongue-in-cheek style appeals to the newspaper's editors and writers. Their goal is to entertain and present the viewpoints of students.

"We don't have somebody breathing down our throat about journalistic integrity," a smiling Holliday observed.

The Gazette regularly features poetry and mock ads. One such ad featured this text: "Potatoes, they're pretty good." Another "ad" complimented the school's administration for "not being in the bottom 5 percent of university administrations."

The newspaper's front page typically features a single, stick-to-the-facts story about an upcoming campus event. Page two is devoted to a lengthy feature on a faculty member.

But it is the biting satire of the back-page story in each edition that has become Gazette's trademark.

Much of the satire is the work of Conarroe, who feels the Arrow often doesn't adequately portray student views.

He doesn't mind being viewed as a troublemaker. "You don't want to highlight the good things. The Capaha Arrow does that," he said.

When the administration unveiled plans to renovate the Towers complex, the Gazette offered its humorous take on the whole issue.

In its February edition, the paper said students would be moved out of the Towers complex, which would then be renovated into a $30 million apartment complex for Southeast administrators and their dependents.

The totally fictitious story put words in Dr. SueAnn Strom's mouth. Strom is vice president of student affairs at the university.

"Southeast, like any good university, is utmost for the community, the administration, the faculty and the staff. And if we help out some students along the way, then we've done more than anyone can ask for," one made-up Strom quote reads.

Conarroe said the newspaper went out of its way to make it clear to readers that the back-page stories weren't to be taken literally.

The back page features a word of advice, with the type flipped as in a mirror image. The advice: "Don't believe everything you read."

But Conarroe said some students believed what they read on the paper's back page.

Strom reads the Gazette. She understands that some of the stories are intended to be humorous.

"I read them and say that it's so ridiculous no one would ever believe it," she said.

Strom said the Gazette goes overboard at times. Its references to the death of a student from a hazing ritual weren't funny, she said.

Dr. Roy Keller teaches in the school's mass communication department and is the faculty adviser to the Capaha Arrow.

"Underground newspapers are a part of campus life," he said.

Keller doesn't find fault with the Gazette. "We have freedom of the press and they are welcome to do their thing."

But he said some students don't understand satire, particularly at Southeast where alternative publications are uncommon.

"It is different here because they come along sporadically and occasionally," said Keller. "It's not something people expect."