Clement gave me 2 missed calls and an sms asking me to call him back, saying that it’s urgent.

Turned out that another group of students he talked to about starting a campus wide newspaper had secured a huge amount of funding. He was worried that our group would be “squashed like ants”.

Well, he certainly had a point. Money is important, for without it, how are you going to get things done these days? Having said that, money is not everything. I was appalled to hear that group of student asking Clement how much money he wanted if he were to work under them.

It certainly seems to me that those students are primarily thinking of the campuswide newspaper as a business rather than a real newspaper. Sorry to disappoint but journalists don’t write to be paid big bucks. If I don’t believe that your newspaper is in the public interest, even if you pay me ten thousand a month to write, I won’t join you (then again, I might consider joining because if you are stupid enough to let me rip you off, I will not be stupid and WILL rip you off).

The core group of us believe in bringing timely, well-written and independent news and viewpoints for the campus community. The campus publications we have now are lacking in both bite and taste, and it sends shudders down all of our necks to read them. Frankly, to achieve our aim of bringing timely, well-written and independent news, we don’t really care if we get any money out of it or not.

If there is going to be a clash between us and them, I look forward to having a rival. In terms of financial muscle, my group’s David and the other group Goliath. However, we all know how the story ended. My team will deliver quality, quite simply because we have all the best writers there are on campus. Undergraduates are a picky bunch; if you don’t have quality, your paper is going into the thrash can. And, no amount of marketing or window dressing can beautify thrash.

Thrash will always be thrash. Period.