Margaret Baum

If you know me well, you prob­a­bly know about The San Matean and what a big role it has played in my life.

In case you don’t know, The San Matean is the student-run news­pa­per at The Col­lege of San Mateo.

It is the place where I fell in love with jour­nal­ism, where I learned more about life and the real world than I ever thought I would.

I found out today that the classes that sup­port The San Matean were can­celled for the Fall semester.

For two years The San Matean’s news­room became a sec­ond home to me. I was always there because I wanted to be.

I held many roles there: Man­ag­ing Edi­tor, Editor-in-Chief, and then Exec­u­tive Editor.

I have since left The Col­lege of San Mateo and am now study­ing jour­nal­ism at San Jose State University.

I will always remem­ber The San Matean as the place it all started.

At the end of my first semes­ter on the paper I began gath­er­ing pub­lic records about the future of the jour­nal­ism pro­gram and started to write edi­to­ri­als about my findings.

I still hold a role on the paper’s advi­sory com­mit­tee and would always be there to read an edi­to­r­ial for the staff or help with a records request, even after my depar­ture from the school.

If you want to know more about the details of the first amend­ment sit­u­a­tion with the school, feel free to visit, http://firstamendmentcsm.blogspot.com/.

I hope this post makes sense. There are so many emo­tions I am feel­ing right now that I don’t even know where to begin.

The adviser to The San Matean, Ed Remitz is a very spe­cial per­son in my life. He is almost like a sec­ond father to me. He’s always been there for me no mat­ter what. He taught me so many invalu­able lessons. Some of those lessons were ones I didn’t care to learn at the time, but as I fur­ther my jour­nal­ism edu­ca­tion I find that those lessons are the most use­ful tools I have.

I have made count­less friends through The San Matean and they all hold a spe­cial place in my life. I felt like we were a sec­ond fam­ily. We spent late nights work­ing on the paper and we always helped each other. There were times when I saw Ed and the staff more than I saw my own boyfriend or family.

After talk­ing with a few peo­ple about the real­ity that the days of The San Matean are over, I found that peo­ple shared those mem­o­ries like I did. They too felt that this paper held such a spe­cial place in their lives. The San Matean was the place they too fell in love with journalism.

I hope to cre­ate a peti­tion on change.org where peo­ple can go and share how the paper has helped them. Even though this might not change the real­ity that The San Matean is no more it can be a great tools so that the com­mu­nity can see what an impact this com­mu­nity col­lege news­pa­per made on the stu­dents who loved it.

For now all we have are the mem­o­ries and lessons learned, but to me The San Matean will always mean so much more.

As for the details of how this hap­pened, Ed and some other instruc­tors were emailed a memo with a list of can­celled classes. The classes that pro­duce the paper were on that list.

Sev­eral local media out­lets are already on the story and will be con­tact­ing for­mer staff mem­bers. I will be sure to keep you all updated here.

That’s all for now. Feel free to con­tact me if you want to talk to the media and I’ll pass along your name.