I come into contact with soap and water only once a year. I have
stains that will never come out.
People walk all over me. Newspapers and the orange chicken from
Panda Express are my eau de parfum.
I am the Daily Bruin carpet, and I am special.
Seriously. Not many carpets could handle a newsroom, much less
the Daily Bruin.
Not only do I have dust balls from the Kennedy era trying to
cuddle, but there is this issue with the air circulation ““ as
in, there is none.
Now, I realize I don’t have the glitz associated with
being the chancellor’s office carpet or the prestige of the
USAC carpet, but what I lack in fancy-schmanciness, I make up in
eavesdropping privileges.
In fact, I have finally been able to figure The Bruin out. Call
me omnipotent; call me all-knowing; heck, you can even call me
Stephen Colbert. But I’ve come to understand The Bruin and am
about to share its secret with you. So here goes:
The Daily Bruin staffers care.
You think I’m joking. How could the same harried people
who pepper you with uncomfortable questions and place awkward
cameras inches from your face care about me?
Put simply, they care because they can.
The real world is a complicated mess where profit margins
dictate policy and corporations run newspapers at the beck and call
of the bottom line (or so I hear from my low-lying position).
And yet as much as the students at the Daily Bruin lament the
state of the media, they have yet to let go of their insistence on
reporting events accurately and objectively.
Shocking, I know.
The thing is, the Daily Bruin reporters, editors, photographers,
designers and copy editors can afford to care.
They can afford to publish all the names of the soldiers who
have died in Iraq for a story about Sept. 11, 2001.
They can take the time to talk to over 80 graduate students
living in Weyburn Terrace about broken promises.
They can devote half the front page to articles about AIDS or
the rebuilding efforts in Southeast Asia, all from reporters who,
while studying abroad in South Africa and Thailand, still want to
contribute to the paper.
They even have a whole group of people who stay up way past
their bedtimes, just so everything from headlines to tag lines are
libel-free.
I know it’s easy to take the Daily Bruin for granted,
especially when issues get scattered on top of you like mulch in a
Western-themed bar.
It is therefore comforting to know that until the end of time,
the Daily Bruin staffers will always be stressed about the sources
who have yet to call them back, the scoops the L.A. Times will
inevitably get, and the investigative stories sure to rock the
administration’s world.
All that brings a smile to my non-existent face.
E-mail nbanach@media.ucla.edu for tips on how to
telepathically
communicate with your carpet.