We’ve closed the books on the Spring 2025 semester at WKU Student Publications with some excellent work across the board.
While we continued to face enormous challenges coping with budget cuts, students on the College Heights Herald, the Talisman, Student Publications Advertising and Cherry Creative did remarkable work that funded our operation and produced excellent journalism and other content.
They watched out for the public good, held up a mirror to a diverse community and captured life on the Hill in ways that no one else could match.
Our staffs’ journalism continued to be excellent — showing how donations to the university have fallen over the past eight years, how budget cuts have affective their daily lives and routines, and showing that it will cost nearly as much to repair the flawed Hilltopper Hall dorm as it did to build it — more than $40 million.
The semester wrapped up with both the Herald and the Talisman reporting on plans to renovate Cherry Hall and tear down Faculty House — projects that generated more comment and controversy in the WKU community than nearly anything else this year. Just this week, WKU paused plans to tear down the 1920 Faculty House — built by students who chopped down the cedar trees for it themselves — to hire an expert to see if it can be restored.
Both the Talisman and the Herald continued to publish excellent newsletters, with the Herald’s daily and the Talisman’s weekly newsletters typically achieving an open rate in excess of 25%.
The students also did exceptional work generating revenue to fund our operation, producing the Bowling Green Dining Guide that brought in nearly $9,000 in revenue, the Housing Guide and WKU Housing Fair generating more than $25,000, the Best of the Hill Festival and annual section bringing in nearly $10,000 and the Spring Grad Guide generating nearly $16,000.
This along with more than $44,000 donated by alumni and friends for immediate needs, helped us pay the bills this year and is allowing is to take 11 students this summer to the College Media Mega Workshop, the best and most intensive training available. (It helps that it’s also incredibly affordable.)
Along the way, we won our 50th national Pacemaker Award — our second in a row for the Student Media Business Pacemaker — and celebrated the Centennial for WKU Student Publications.
I want to give a special salute to our five student leaders who graduated this semester — Cecilia Alali and Ragan Harrington, co-executive editors of the Talisman; Price Wilborn, editor-in-chief of the College Heights Herald; Keelin Davis, manager of Student Publications Advertising; and Nicole Johnson, director of Cherry Creative. They were, in a word, outstanding. We will miss them, each and every one.
I’m proud of our students’ work and what they accomplished this Spring 2025 semester. And I hope you are, as well.
— Chuck Clark