As anyone who reads this paper has probably noticed, we have not published or written anything this semester. For those who aren’t aware, Basement Medicine is run by attending college students, and one of the biggest hurdles for us this year has been our lack of a proper plan or deadlines.
To explain what we mean, for those who don’t know, Basement Medicine (BM) used to be a class with a faculty member guiding and teaching us everything to do with writing stories and how to manage a newspaper. As of 2025, we’ve transitioned from a class with structure and strict deadlines to a club with soft to no deadlines and very little structure beyond our roles and what we do here at BM. Another aspect of this which has impacted us is that when Basement Medicine was a class, it fit into our schedules and it had some reward to it, ie. Grades and credits on our transcripts. That’s not to say that we didn’t enjoy the work we do here, of course we do, but we are highlighting this to show just how rough and sudden this transition has been for us. So, we haven’t been able to publish any stories or do much work. We’ve been violently tossed into the metaphorical cold pool and we’re still shivering from it.
However, this does not mean we’ve given up. Far from it. In fact, we are dedicated to continuing this newspaper and doing more with it. Some of the changes we plan on making are a little different from how things used to be, but you can expect great things from us going forward!
First, before the transition, we had a physical paper which we distributed throughout the Johnson campus and the broader Johnson community. Due to possible funding issues, we’ve decided to make the physical paper into a zine, possibly printed in-house and which lends us more customization with its format and size. The pending release schedule for each zine would be every month or so. We plan on releasing a physical copy and a digital one which, if people would like, they can print and share among others.
Second, we are also planning on transferring all of the online stories on our current website host to a new host. We do not know which host we will be choosing yet, but we have a few contenders. One of which requires knowledge of HTML, a programming language which is used for most websites. However, this plan and process will take several months, and it may be possible for us to work on this over the summer, but no promises there. Either way, all new stories will continue to be published online as soon as they are ready.
Third, we would like to recruit people from outside the BM for help! As it stands, Johnson itself doesn’t have its own newspaper, with the News & Citizen being a newspaper for the Lamoille country. Partly because of this, we would like to extend an invitation to our community members in Johnson and beyond to participate in submitting stories and ideas for stories to cover. We are also opening submissions for art and writing to be published on our website and in the zine, as Johnson is also a town with a focus on the arts. (A fact our administration seems to consistently forget.)
If you have an idea for a story, a story you want to write about, or a piece of art or writing you want to submit, here is the google form link to that! We plan on putting up fliers all over Johnson as well with a QR code as well as the link itself.
Fourth, we would like to extend an invitation to the faculty at Johnson to create assignments which would be posted on the website and in the zine for the next semester! This also includes faculty outside of the English department. Generally, what we would be looking for are any kind of articles like stories, forums, columns, features, heck, even creative writing pieces or poetry for Art Attack. Features would be amazing, especially for longer pieces (2000 words give or take) about any topic. We’d also be very grateful if faculty could encourage students to also join our club!
If any of you are interested in making assignments for your classes which could be submitted in the paper, we would love to work with you! Please get in contact us through the [email protected] email!
Finally, we would like to acknowledge and thank one of the members of our senior staff is graduating this summer — Dayne Bell! He is a wonderful person and was instrumental in making sure this newspaper ran smoothly for the past three years. Without him, we wouldn’t be here today. We wish him all the success in the world!
It is going to be an adjustment moving forward, but regardless of what happens, we do still plan on publishing, no matter what form that may take. If we do end up moving the website to another site or if anything comes up, we will make an announcement for that in advance. If anybody has any suggestions, concerns, comments, or questions please let us know below or email us at [email protected].
We’re so excited to move forward with this paper, and we hope you stay tuned!
