Wait a second. This isn’t the Oxnard College Observer. It isn’t the Ventura College Press or the Moorpark College Reporter either. Something’s wrong.

So allow me to give a brief update in case you don’t already know. Last semester our college district cleared away our campus student newspapers and journalism programs to make room for a district wide paper and journalism program serving each campus from Moorpark College.

Why? According to Chancellor James Meznek, it was because we had a budget crisis, and something had to go. After asking the presidents of each campus to recommend cuts to close a $4.5 million budget gap, the presidents at Oxnard and Ventura colleges recommended the journalism programs, among others.

“The enrollment of the programs is too small to justify the continuation of its existence at those sites,” he said on April 12 at a student demonstration at the district offices in Camarillo. ” If we don’t cut these programs, we’ll have to cut others.”

Whether or not he and the presidents made the right cuts, no journalism student from each of our three campuses was about to give up our programs without a fight, myself included. By the end of the semester, it was as if the student voice of all three campuses had died with the campus newspapers.

And here you are, five months later, reading this . . . this . . . thing. What is it? Who is responsible for making it? And why should you read it?

What you hold in your hands is the result of three campuses coming together to restore the student voice of each campus through one newspaper.

To accomplish this, my goal as editor is not to compromise our staff by becoming a conglomerate mess but instead to continue to represent everything that makes a campus unique, from cultural mainstays to campus rivalries.

For example, if you’re a Ventura College student, we know you might not be all that interested in what’s going on at Oxnard or Moorpark. So we’re making it easy for you. By the time you read the headline of a story, you’ll know whether it pertains to your campus, another campus, or the entire district.

Or perhaps you are interested in what’s happening at the other campuses. Well now you can have it all in one paper. In the context of the other campuses, you can gain a broader understanding of the issues and events on your own campus.

As a general rule, we will try to cover an equal number of the most significant stories from each campus. If a story is about a given campus, then we will have a reporter from that campus cover the story whenever possible.

While new technology, such as teleconferencing, videoconferencing, and an online classroom, allows us to have a virtual newsroom where people can file and pick up stories, it’s still a steep learning curve.

The challenges are great, but it is possible to overcome them, and our voices will become stronger as a result.

We who are involved with the paper even better prepared to take on careers in journalism, especially those with different bureaus, such as the Ventura County Star, the Los Angeles Times and any other major newspaper.

Five months ago, I didn’t want to lose my paper, the Moorpark College Reporter. Nor did the other journalism students. But it did happen, and now it’s time to bring back the student voice of each campus through this one newspaper.