Observer - Story

Informer Ties Endure
by David Isgur

Among those attending the Informer reunion were (left to right): Kathy Dube, John Dube ’80, Kay Jones, and Andy Jones ’78.

When a dedicated group of former student newspaper reporters reunites, one would expect them to get into a rabble-rousing discussion of campus politics or their run-ins with Public Safety. But when just such a group of some 40 former staff members of the Informer gathered on April 20 to celebrate the paper's 25th anniversary, the topics of conversation were centered more on the color of the walls and the carpeting in the newspaper's office.

What was immediately clear was the deep affection everyone had for each other and for the Informer. Paul Brand '02, who was editor-in-chief of the paper in 2001-2002 and who helped put the reunion together, said the turnout for the reunion "showed that the Informer touched a lot of people while they were at this school."

He said the idea for the reunion came as the paper's current editorial leaders were searching through older issues of the Informer for a special 25th anniversary supplement. He added that the number of positive responses to the invitations to the reunion was a bit of a surprise, but it was a strong indication of how much the paper meant to the people who got involved in it.

Stephen Busemeyer '93, who is now an editor on the state news desk of The Hartford Courant, and Jerry Griffin '94, who now works at PAN Communications in Boston, reminisced about how they gave up their spring break vacation in 1993 to spend a week going through the University's financial records for a story on the University's budget crisis and personnel layoffs. Griffin was the Informer's editor-in-chief in 1993-1994 and Busemeyer was the paper's copy editor at that time.

They believe the paper served a critical role in keeping students and the whole campus community informed about the issues facing the University. Busemeyer said he's an e-mail subscriber to the current edition of the Informer and he thinks today's students are doing a great job with the newspaper.

The Informer played a vital role on campus from its very beginnings, said Andy Jones '78, who was the paper's first editor in 1977 and is now director of advertising for Data Management, Inc. "When we started the paper, we didn't have any other papers on campus. The Informer was there to represent the students, not the administration or the Student Government Association," he said.

At the reunion dinner, Brand reviewed the accomplishments of the Informer's current staff during the past year, including a controversial editorial in which the paper did not recommend any of the three candidates for Student Government Association president and indicated that none of them was strong enough to lead the organization. He also praised those who came before him for setting a standard to which the newspaper would continue to strive.

Many of the former Informer staffers attending the reunion have forged careers in the media or communications. Of the four attendees who represented the Informer's founders-Jones '78, John Dube '80, Kate Eisenmann '79 and Amy Jay Barry '78-Jones is in advertising, Dube is a public relations executive at Aetna, Eisenmann is an independent filmmaker in New York City, and Barry is a freelance writer and a features editor for Shoreline Publications.

Maybe that's because they never forgot their first love-the Informer. As Jones said, "When John (Dube) and I came back to campus for an event a couple of years ago, we both had the same thought about the Informer. We wished we could do this all the time."