Editorial: A Semester in Review from The Vista Editing Team

In the spring semester of 2025, The Vista advisor Erika Williams, along with the Dean of Liberal Arts Elizabeth Maier, and the Student Media Advisory Board,  at the University of Central Oklahoma, decided it would be the best business decision to stop paying for printed editions of the UCO student-run paper The Vista due to its 12% pick up rate, budget cuts, and low enrollment.  

The budget Williams and the Ucentral News advisor were given was $56,000 in total to split between all student media programs. They both decided to split the budget directly down the middle, with each entity receiving $28,000 for salary and operations. 

Printing The Vista every year costs around $12,000. If The Vista were to use $12,000 of our $28,000, there wouldn’t be enough money left to pay staff and produce a quality paper every week. 

With approximately 900 out of the 1,000 copies that were printed a week getting thrown away or not distributed, low enrollment that UCO has not been able to recover from since the pandemic, which has caused budget cuts, and the rising trend in digital journalism, The Vista became fully online. 

This semester of being fully digital, we have been able to get 39 out of the 50 students who contribute to us published. We have also reached 206 articles published for The Vista this semester. 

Last semester, online, only 15 individual students were published out of roughly 50, and there were only 25 articles published online the entire spring 2025 semester, along with only 8 out of the 13 scheduled printed papers ever getting printed. 

Our website viewership has gone up immensely.

Along with our social media engagement. 

Though our staff has been able to accomplish so much this semester, we have not been met without challenges. 

What should have been a fairly smooth transition has now led to an independent student paper, claims of university silencing, and article after article of half-truths from community members. 

This semester, several mass communications professors, along with the former graduated editor-in-chief of The Vista, and the new The Independent View news outlet, have supported a smear campaign against UCO, Dean Maier, Professor Williams, and the current Vista staff that has been fueled by misogyny and ego. 

It is not lost on us how powerful and connected the professors who have spoken out against The Vista this semester are. They hold so much influence in the journalism industry that for most of this semester, our staff has been afraid to speak out against their behavior due to fear of retaliation within our careers. 

The Independent View was started with support from the ethics chair and the former editor-in-chief of The Vista with the stated intention to help students who wanted to learn the craft of print journalism, gain that ability. 

However, it seems The  Independent View was created more with the intention to use current UCO students as pawns in this campaign centered around the frustration towards the women who made the final decision to cease print. 

Perhaps if a man were to have made the final decision to end print at UCO and move fully digital to stay with the growing trends in journalism, he would have been praised; in fact, this would not be the fight it has become. 

Perhaps if a man were in the editor-in-chief position this semester, his credibility to hold that position would not be questioned. Kenna Attaway, the editor-in-chief, has not only had her credibility questioned this semester, but she has also been cornered by a member of the independent staff and told that she does not deserve her position. 

This campaign against student staff has also spanned into the classroom. Two separate media ethics professors took a screenshot of Attaway’s personal LinkedIn post, where she discussed how it was an honor to meet and interview the president of UCO for the first time. 

These professors told students her post was PR for the UCO president and that her appearance in the photo she had attached to the post seemed uncomfortable with her “tight smile and slumped posture.” These professors held this lesson without consulting Attaway. 

Perhaps if a man were to make the same post, his physical appearance would not be discussed, let alone taught about, without his knowledge. 

Our sports editor, Emyli Creekmore, and our digital editor, Addyson Riemer, have also been questioned in their roles and talked down to by members of The Independent View staff. 

The Independent View staff has said on their website and in lists of grievances from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of The Press and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Freedom of Expression (FIRE) that were sent to UCO that, our staff is “unethical,” that The Vista has lost “quality,” and that we are controlled by UCO and The President Todd Lamb. 

We would like to formally say that no one on The Vista staff has ever been told what we can and cannot publish to our website. Also, no one on The Vista staff has been told that they cannot write a story they want to write. 

We, as a staff, have never been approached by the president of The University, Todd Lamb, and been told what we should or should not publish on The Vista site.  The University of Central Oklahoma has frankly been extremely supportive of the work The Vista has been doing this semester.

Though our current staff has not been silenced by the university, we still take claims of university silencing others seriously. Throughout the semester, The Vista team has been investigating these claims and will have an investigative piece out during the break.

Our staff has been silenced and intimidated by The Independent View’s claims for long enough. 

In a world where the President of the United States can point to a female reporter and tell her “quiet piggy” with no repercussions, we refuse to sit idly by while men in the journalism community exhibit that same form of misogyny to their colleagues and students. 

If the university were really trying to silence student voices, it would not have allowed The Independent View staff to pass out their printed papers criticizing the university and its administration on campus. 

Suppose the university was trying to silence The Vista last semester. Why did the former editor-in-chief and staff members who have been very vocal about supposed First Amendment violations never speak out last semester, or right when the semester ended? If the university was trying to silence The Vista last semester, why did The Vista publish news articles that were critical of the university? 

The Independent View and its elder supporters have been loud and clear that they want our staff silenced. We will no longer sit back and tolerate our staff feeling like their important journalistic work is not being taken seriously because a few community journalists refuse to even ask people in the newsroom and working for The Vista every day what has been happening. 

 We will not let our staff feel afraid to speak out due to retaliation from community members, and we will never sit idly by when we see injustice happening in our community. 

Though we as a staff have been dealing with all of this harassment, we have persevered, and we will continue to next semester. 

It has been an honor to serve as your editing team, and we are excited to continue to serve the UCO community next semester. 

Sincerely, The Editors of The Vista