The importance of independent, human news in conversation with Derek Brower
In many respects, The Argosy should not exist. Students seem more disconnected today than ever before, leasing their education to generative artificial intelligence (AI) models. Honest reports and propaganda alike about the economy, war, and immigration drive distrust and disillusionment with the media. It is exhausting to be this connected. Plus, the rapid decline of institutional print news across Canada and corporate interest within legacy newsrooms has become worrisome for our crux on social media. In this light (and in reality), the art of independent journalism is dying. Currently, student newsrooms grapple with an age-old question of whether we teach ourselves the importance of community and accountability through the foundations of journalism, or posture this as pure egoism to drive relevancy and a full newsroom.
Not only does this paradigm shake student newsrooms, but the legacy newsrooms in Manhattan and London as well. In an interview with The Argosy on a cloudy February day in Sackville, News Editor Derek Brower of the Financial Times said, “news media, right now, is trying to figure out what its role is in this atomizing world. Whether its role is to be some kind of opposition, preserver of the status quo, anti the old order, whether we have a duty to preserve values that seem to be lost on social media.”
Language, social climate, and politics have always been undeniable forces shaping our lives in subtle ways. The importance of the political written word has always existed. The political purpose and contours of news media may never be more crucial today. In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell said, to write with this purpose is a “desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.” Yet, is this political purpose enough for journalism to survive the world of tomorrow?
“One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language,” said Orwell in Why I Write in 1946. In 2026, six in 10 university students according to KPMG in Canada use generative AI in their coursework. It has become synonymous with a friend, a mentor, an assistant. This additionally raises the question of why we must be uniquely human in our prose and approach our art with these political intentions. “There’s no way that an AI can be informed in the same way that I have been by seeing people die in front of me. That’s not something that the AI can ever infuse in its writing,” says Brower.
Something which is not lost way up in the newsrooms of Manhattan skyscrapers is the importance of serving a community, not an agenda. “Trust is the most rewarding thing in journalism, in a way, building the trust of your reader, that they know that you are there, they know that you are giving a fair representation,” says Brower. “The best thing is being with people who read your stuff and hearing from them.”
In my view, this is why The Argosy continues to exist. Thirty students from around the world descend yearly to a boxy ‘newsroom’ tucked away in the attic to make a real, print newspaper at a university with no journalism program and a town with no local media presence. The stories we arrive here with are uniquely ours, stemming from our lives and languages before we knew each other. It shapes our lives during and afterward. It reminds us voices have the possibility to amplify each other in real life. It is seeing people where they are, where they are going, and giving their voice and place legitimacy.
It is for this specific political, human purpose we write.