Reading through this week’s edition of The Chart, you may notice that it’s a little, shall we say, light.

This week’s edition turned out to be only six pages.

Six whole pages.

Between a trip to competition in Minnesota for the core of the staff and a snow day on our normal meeting day, stories just didn’t come to fruition in time.

Is that an excuse?

Absolutely not. In fact, we’re almost ashamed that it came to putting out a six-page paper instead of busting our asses to put out more of a product for those who actually read it on a weekly basis.

After much discussion and a few shouting matches in the Chart office Wednesday afternoon, we decided to print a six-page edition, not because we felt like it was the best work we could do and certainly not because it’s what we wanted to do, but because we felt like we had to.

For those who have been living under a rock, Missouri universities are falling on hard times, and Missouri Southern is no different.

Cuts are going to be made to student programs, and students will be pissed off.

In that regard, The Chart is no different.

In no way has it been made official that we will see cuts next year, but several casual conversations have led us to believe we’ll be losing most, if not all, of our print edition next semester.

Yes, that means the paper you currently hold in your hands will no longer exist in its current weekly format.

True, The Chart will exist in the sense that we’ll have an online presence and will be able to adapt to the 24/7 news cycle we learn about so often in the communication department.

But at what cost?

Taking away a newspaper’s print edition is handcuffing young journalists.

Many from our staff don’t go on to jobs as reporters but to jobs as page designers, copy editors and even ad sales representatives.

If the print edition is cut, our training shifts from a very real world scenario to one that doesn’t quite accurately represent the current state of the business.

And let us say this: If we’re being honest, some of us wouldn’t still be here at Southern without the print edition of The Chart.

For those who picked up this six-page paper and were disappointed by the lack of coverage, we apologize. We wanted to hold off to put out a better product next week, but the current political climate here at the University made that impossible.

For those who picked up this six page paper because you want to see if you can cut it, just put it down.

If you want to see what the print edition of this paper means to us, come visit us on a Wednesday night. Come see the load we put in while everyone else is snug in their beds.

Come see the way we fight and struggle and work our asses off in order to be more prolific than anyone on campus in regards to how much content we put out and how often. After all, who else puts their homework out there for everyone to read?

Nobody. And as long as our work still means something to someone, you can’t take it away from us.