Schools

Think Magazine Heads to Albany

Editor hops a bus to the state capital for answers.

Adam Peck found himself catching a 4:28 a.m. train, followed by a 7 a.m. MegaBus, in a last-minute decision to travel to Albany on Thursday morning.

The Think Magazine editor and his team had done the best they could tracking down information on the NYSUNY 2020 bill by phone, but as the crucial legislative week went on, they found their progress was starting to stagnate.

"By Wednesday afternoon, as it was beginning to look like the major pieces of legislation would not come to a vote that day," Peck said, "we made the decision to book travel and head on up [Thursday]."

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His total travel time will amount to more than 10 hours, and he's footing the bill for the trip himself. But to cover a topic he says is meaningful to Stony Brook students – calling it "the most significant change to SUNY in decades" – it might turn out to be worth it. Think Magazine has been getting just what it hoped for – thoughtful debate.

"We've been really successful at getting our readers to share our content on Facebook, and it's rewarding to see conversation threads 10, 15, 20 comments long discussing an issue we bring attention to," Peck said. "As our name suggests, we strive to inspire thinking, and this story has done that."

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Think's editors were also afraid the bill would get buried by another major issue in Albany this week – the Senate's gay marriage vote – which played into their decision to send a reporter upstate.

Since the spring semester ended, Think Magazine has essentially been the only active student news publication, and is aggressively covering issues like NYSUNY 2020. Peck said he doesn't get why other campus news outlets take a break over the summer. "It's not as though news takes a break," he said.

He admits, however, he may get burned out in the process of maintaining the coverage.

"But at least we'll have some quality coverage to show for it," he said.

As for the other campus news outlets, their absence may be excused.

"Most of us are either interning or working over the summer," said Frank Posillico, editor of The Statesman. "We are going to be doing something on it when we get back. If something big happened, obviously we'd cover it."

The Stony Brook Press has a summer issue slated to publish in July, in which executive editor Nick Statt said the newspaper "will be covering NY SUNY 2020 in the only logically sensible way a publication like ours could cover it so late in the game, which will be a news or news analysis piece encompassing the entire legislative process and the outcome."

Editors from The Stony Brook Independent could not be reached for comment.


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