James Witherow is the new Editor of the Perspective for the 2008-09 school year as he takes over for Summer Gemmati who graduated.

“Being named editor is a huge honor to me! I’ve put a lot of hard work into the paper over the past year and a half and really enjoy what I do,” Witherow said. “It’s going to be hard in the footsteps of two great editors before me, Lisa [Cialfi] and Summer, but I think I can bring some new things to the table and hopefully make the paper even better.

Witherow follows Lisa Cialfi and Summer Gematti who has run the paper the past two school years respectively. He plans on building off the success the paper has had the past two years.

“Over the past 2 years we’ve really become a staple in the Medaille community and I look to keep that going all through next year. There might be some minor tweaks here and there but overall I want to just keep the Perspective going on the track it’s on now, and that is to keep the students informed and to be kind of a second voice of the students to the faculty and staff,” Witherow said.

Witherow calls his a sports freak but he doesn’t plan on letting his love for sport, get in the way of his responsibilities as editor.

“Sports will stay about the same as it is now. The athletic department and teams are getting better and we recognize this, however, we don’t have as many teams as a lot of schools and it’s not as big here as in other schools so for right now it will stay about four pages. However, as we do with playoffs and NCAA tournaments, we will continue to send out sports extra pages via e-mail to the students and faculty as well as keep everyone up to date on the latest on conference championships, ECAC tournaments and NCAA tournaments.”

Next year should be a good year for the newspaper as it continues to go in the same direction as it has the past two years.

Medaille College now has a magazine. The Perspective staff put together a magazine a debuted it in the last week of May.

“The Perspective staff decided to put together a magazine because we wanted to put out another publication that the college would enjoy. We thought a magazine was a great idea. We wanted to make sure that the content of the magazine would appeal to a wide audience. We wanted everyone on campus to be able to pick up the magazine and find an article they could relate to and enjoy,” Executive Editor Summer Gemmati said.

It was a collaborative idea from everyone in the paper. We saw other school newspapers did it and thought it would be a fun project. It was all we thought it was going to be and more, a lot more,” Features Editor, James Witherow said.

A handful of students on the Perspective staff were also on the staff of INcite. For editorial positions on the magazine, interviews were held.

The magazine will continue next year, and most likely come out next Spring. Eventually the staff would like to publish the magazine once each semester according to Gemmati.

The rest of the magazine staff consisted of Lisa Murphy who was the adviser, Megan Fitzgerald who was the editor-in-chief, Nick Calandra was photo director James Witherow, Stephanie Gemmati and Chris Musial were features editors.

“I did the magazine because I thought it would be a nice change of pace from the newspaper. The paper is very strict on rules and structure and a magazine you can be a lot more creative and explore more with layout and writing. I just thought it would be a nice change up from the usual and thats what it was, and it came out great,” Witherow said.

“It is definitely going to continue next year, Megan Fitzgerald is going to be the Editor in Chief of the Magazine and I have no doubt that with all she put into it this year, it’s going to be even better next year! We are hoping that it will eventually come out every semester but for right now it’s going to be a once a year thing,” Witherow said.

“I heard that a lot of people on campus were really impressed with the magazine and I am hopeful that the entire campus was able to find an article or two that they were really interested in considering that the main reason we choice such a range of articles was to appeal to a wide audience base,” Gemmati said.

The Perspective will be hosting a release party for it first-ever magazine, INcite on Thursday, May 1. The magazine was produced by the Perspective staff. The event will take place from 5-7 p.m. and will be held at the Perspective newpaper office, located at 73 Humboldt. There will food and all guests will be registered to win an iPod Shuffle. All are welcome to attend the event and be part of Perspective history.

The Bisons need to get out of Dunn Tire Park for a week or so. The Herd has only won two of the six games that they have played in their home ballpark this season thus far. On Friday night, the Syracuse Chiefs finished off the sweep of the Bisons with a 8-4 win.

Russ Adam hit the Bisons pitchers well as he was 3 for 5 with 1 home run, 3 runs batted in and 2 runs scored. Ex-Bisons, a current Bisons killer, Hector Luna, who has been hitting well against the Bisons throughout this series, went 2 for 4 with a home run, 2 runs batted in and a run scored.

There were a few bright spots for the Bisons as Ryan Mulhern and Andy Gonzalez both hit solo home runs.

Matt Ginter picked up the loss as he only went 4 and 1/3 innings on 8 hits, he allowed 7 runs, 6 of them earned, striking out 3 and giving up 2 home runs.

The next Bisons home stand will start on Saturday, April 26 against the Pawtucket Red Sox, the AAA affiliate of the Boston Red Sox.

The Bisons have gotten off to their worst two week start in 15 years. The Bisons record fell to 5-10 as they dropped their third straight to the Syracuse Chiefs with a 9-7 loss on Thursday afternoon in front of a good weekday crowd of 8,032.

Bisons starting pitcher Brian Slocum got off to a rocky start as he gave up three runs on fours hits in the 2nd inning. Slocum threw 64 pitches in three innings of work. Jeff Harris came in to pitch in the 4th inning and stayed on for four innings. He gave up a big inning in the sixth as the Chiefs scored three runs on four hits in the inning.

The Bisons were trailing 9-3 heading into the 8th. The exploded for 4 runs on five hits with the big blow being Jason Cooper’s 3-run home run. The team had not been hitting in the first couple weeks of the season but collected 11 hits in the loss against the Chiefs.

“I was probably dejected as I’ve ever been after the first seven innings and it was good to see these guys kind of rebound,” Manager Torey Lovullo said.

Outfielder Jason Cooper was a bright spot out for the Bisons in the loss as he went 3 for 4 with a home run, 2 runs scored and 3 runs batted in and he made a great play in the field early in the game.

“He saved us a run out there. He is playing the way I hoped all the guys would be playing. He is really taking the game to the opposition. He had a great two strike approach and hit a home run and got us right back into the game. There is never a doubt of any passion or energy, he goes out there and plays full speed and I like that,” Lovullo said about Jason Cooper.

Cooper was able to get the Bisons back in the game with his 3-run home run in the 8th inning of of Chiefs reliever, Jordan De Jong.

“He [De Jong] threw me a few change-ups early. I figured with worst case scenario being he loads the bases and he has to pitch with one more hitter but don’t get off the change-up and he ended throwing another change-up and I was able to dig it out and keep it fair,” Cooper said.

The Bisons will finish off their home stand against Syracuse with the FridayNightBash at 6 p.m. on Friday as the Bisons will host Brian Dux Night.

With technology growing as fast as it has, people have been able to get their daily news through the internet rather than reading it in the newspaper.

What makes the internet better than a newspaper is the fact that online article can be updated at any time during a day. if a story breaks, you don’t have to wait until the next morning to get the news as you do with a newspaper. Most people nowadays are impatient and don’t want to wait a whole day to read about the breaking news that happened yesterday. They would rather know right away.

If I want to read the Boston Globe, I used to have to have it sent to me as a special delivery or go to Boston to get it. Now, everyone has a website and the articles are available on the internet. You can read any newspaper from any city in the United States. This wasn’t available before the internet. The more people use the internet the less they need newspapers or magazines.

Print journalism isn’t going to die anytime soon but the readership will slowly deteriorate. I may not be alive to see the newspaper industry dead but I may be around to see it on life support.

The rain held off just long enough for the Bisons to get in their 21st home opener in downtown Buffalo. Too bad for the fans, the Bisons couldn’t pull out a victory as they were only able to put up two hits in a lost 4-1 to the Toledo Mud Hens on Friday night.

Bisons’ lefty starter Jeremy Sowers saw his record drop to 0-2 as he gave up three solo home runs to Matt Joyce, Mike Hessman, and Jeff Larish.

“The one thing about all those home runs is that they were solo home runs. As a pitcher I don’t worry about that at all. The Tides are a very aggressive hitting team, they don’t get cheated up there at all,” Sowers said.

The Bisons’ haven’t really been as good offensively than it looked they they would on paper at the beginning of the season. As a team Buffalo is second last in batting after the first week, hitting .228 as a team. Players like Ben Fransisco, Josh Barfield, Ryan Mulhern, Aaron Herr, are all proven hitters at this level as look to help Buffalo at the plate this season.

“It’s easy to say that we could be concerned but I believe in these guys theses guys are proven at this level and beyond and I think its going to get better, I know its going to get better at the end of the season we are going to be a totally different team and looking at this totally different,” Manager Torey Lovullo said.

After Sowers left the game after 6th innings, Reid Santos came in relief and pitched three exceptional innings as he recorded six strikeouts and only gave up two hits.

“Reid did a great job. We’ve been trying to find some innings for him. He got better as his outing progressed. His fastball’s got a little life to it and he’s got some quality secondary stuff. The best part about Reid is that he is unfazed by any situation. He’ll go after his hitters and attack anybody,” Lovullo said.

The Bisons will try to get back on the right track as they play three more games against the Mud Hens finishing up on Monday.

All this baseball season, I will be covering the Buffalo Bisons and giving you game recaps and interviews of players, coaches and administrators. I will attend at least one home game a series so that I can cover every team that comes into Dunn Tire Park.

Anyone interested in coming with me for any game this summer and learn to cover the Buffalo Bisons contact me at mattykwmcb@yahoo.com

The next series I will cover will be the Syracuse Chiefs, the AAA team of the Toronto Blue Jays. I will be there on Thursday and Friday.

Matthew Kushner

WMCB Sports Director

Communication Senior

Are you interested in sports reporting? Would you like to learn how to interview professional athletes? Would you like to cover a Buffalo Bisons game at Dunn Tire Park and learn the ropes of a sports reporter?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then send an email to mattykwmcb@yahoo.com explaining what kind of sports reporting that you want to get into and exactly what you want to learn or you can leave a comment with your name and email.

This year the WMCB sports department is offering any Medaille media/communications students the opportunity to cover a Bisons baseball game for the college station and for the media website. The student will be able to pick from any of the Bisons home games in April and May to cover. You will learn from local Buffalo media as you will see first hand how the professionals. The student will also be able to ask questions of the players and coaches as well as take in the ballgame from the press box.

Matty K

WMCB Sports Director

Mattykwmcb@yahoo.com

Smashing Magazine posted these award winning newspapers from around the world. Many have some inspiring examples of typography, layout and graphics. Seeing them printed in languages other than English allows you to focus on the aesthetics and not the content.