As a new semester at the Claremont Colleges begins, a new semester of TSL follows suit. The oldest student newspaper in Claremont is entering its 135th year serving our community, led this fall by Editor-in-Chief Jada Shavers SC ’26 and managing editors Adam Akins PZ ’27 and Charlotte Renner PZ ’27.
Shavers is returning to TSL’s editorial board after her stint as managing editor of arts and culture and opinions last semester — a role Akins now holds proudly. A double anthropology and writing and rhetoric major from Portland, Oregon, Shavers is entering her fifth semester working for TSL.
Akins, also in his fifth semester at TSL, is an English and biology double major hailing from Sacramento, California. Completing the trio is Renner, managing editor of news and sports. She is an environmental science major, entering her fourth semester at TSL, having previously served three semesters as sports editor.
Shavers said she didn’t expect to be on the editorial board, much less editor-in-chief, when she first applied to TSL as an underclassman.
“I kind of applied to TSL on a whim just because I had a friend who was doing it, I felt like I was half-committed at the time,” Shavers said. “But now, I feel like I’ve really grown at TSL. I didn’t expect that I would be on [the editorial board] for two semesters. But it feels right.”
Akins said that he began considering larger responsibilities after spending two semesters on the paper.
“I wanted to be a part of trying to make that positive impact last in this community and trying to make the paper continue to grow and reach more people,” he said.
Renner agreed.
“I was so positively shaped by the newsroom and everybody on staff that I kind of wanted to be a part of making other people feel like that,” Renner said. “But definitely not as a freshman. I applied to be a writer and was like, ‘Wow, there’s no way they’re going to accept me.’”
Fast forward a couple of semesters: now, Shavers, Akins and Renner are behind the wheel and they want the 5C community to know that TSL is a forum for collaboration.
For Shavers, fostering more engagement with on-campus organizations is a priority.
“If there are events happening, we would much rather have them reach out to us and then we can find a way to cover it,” Shavers said. “We’re meant to be the 5C newspaper, so really working with [on-campus organizations] to ensure that they’re feeling seen and heard in our newspaper is really important.”
Akins said that he wants 5C community members to know that TSL is a welcoming recipient of their thoughts and opinions.
“They can write in the paper, if they have an issue with the school, we want to hear those stories, we want to hear those pitches,” he said. “We want to be able to tell them with the most depth and the most outreach in the community, and that we can be a trusted way of doing that.”
Renner added that she’s excited to expand beyond the weekly news cycle into deeper, more investigative stories that can incorporate TSL’s multimedia and data experts.
“The cool thing about journalism is capturing what’s happening at the time,” she said. “In 20 years people can see what people were thinking and feeling.”
Each member of the editorial board underscored the importance of student journalism, especially as a forum for discussion.
“Over the past year and a half, student journalism has really opened up in coverage of what’s happening on campus, specifically with the activism happening on campus,” Shavers said. “It’s really interesting now to continue those efforts as a newspaper being a forum for people to express concerns of the school community, which I think is really important.”
Despite widespread recognition in the United States of journalism’s importance for democratic discourse and accountability, many student journalists face nearly negligible wages.
“It’s really disappointing, honestly,” Shavers said when asked about the issue. She stated that in her past two semesters on ed board, she and her team gave their own roles a pay cut in an attempt to more equally distribute compensation among TSL staff, which includes over 20 paid members.
“It does certainly determine who can be on ed board or who can be senior staff,” Renner added, noting that many students might be forced to choose between a passion for journalism and a minimum-wage job.
“There are students who want to do this, and it’s a shame that we can’t be an option for people who want to contribute to the paper that all five schools benefit from and use in their marketing,” Shavers said.
However, this semester’s editorial board remains optimistic and excited for the future of the paper.
“I’m super excited about how new our senior staff is,” Akins said. “We were all the new kids on the block for a long time and it’s super trippy to be the person who’s curating TSL. Hopefully we’ve done a good job and I’m excited to see the next generation of TSL.”
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