There are so many types of media flashing at us everyday, it is hard to tell what is really considered “news.”

It seems like it would be common sense to know that “news” is something thats timely, prominent, has impact and conflict. It’s something that is important for readers to know.

But if it is not the newscasts on TV, some hyped up with only entertainment news-it is our latest obsession: the Internet, that’s confusing us in this day and age more than ever.

Online, it is easy to tell when you go to your Yahoo! homepage that all of those little stories in the boxes are news.

But are they really? Sometimes these boxes feature a video of a pet running around doing something unique, but these are videotaped by the pet owners.

Should this really be considered news?

Other times, Yahoo! features a question someone asked in the Yahoo! Answers section of the website.

But these “Answers” are not penned by journalists. And really-should people really care about Hilary Duff changing her hair color?

See how the whole idea of “news” is blurring a little bit?

While it is impossible to fix this confusion on the large scale, maybe we can clear up a little bit of confusion when it comes to The Daily Eastern News.

The main purpose of The Daily Eastern News is to help train future journalists. We will mess up and make mistakes-but we are still learning.

We are students, not only working at the paper, but also juggling five different classes at the same time.

The Opinions section of the paper is the only page of the paper where students get to share their opinions.

The staff editorial is the majority opinion of The Daily Eastern News editorial board.

The editorial board consists of the Opinions Editor, News Editor, Associate News Editor, Online Editor, Managing Editor, and Editor in Chief.

Every week a staff editor will rotate onto the editorial board. Paws and Claws is a more upbeat, pro/con column, when two students share their opinion on one topic.

The editorial cartoon is the opinion of the editorial cartoonist. We do not, as a staff, discuss what our editorial cartoons are.

The cartoonist decides what he or she wants to draw and it is put into the paper with the consent of the Opinions Editor and Editor in Chief.

Columns are the same way, and are the sole opinion of the writer.

Any student on campus can be a cartoonist or a columnist by contacting Opinions Editor Dan Cusack.

Sam Sottosanto can be reached at 581-7942 or at [email protected].