The Class of 2011

Every year, Beloit College publishes a list of points to keep in mind about the world view of new students. The original intention of the list was to aid instructors in relating to their students, but it is now an annual event for national newspapers. USA Today published the list last week.

Any item on this list is an opportunity for an op-ed piece or an interview with an instructor. Heck, what about the differences between this year's freshmen and this year's senior class? Those four years make the difference of whether a person might personally remember the fall of the Berlin Wall!

A list like this is also an opportunity to consider your paper's demographics. What's popular with the 'new kids'? And what doesn't matter?

Definition: Fourth Estate

The Fourth Estate refers directly to journalists. The term comes from the idea of the three estates of the Ancien Regime: the First Estate is the clergy, the Second the nobles and the Third the commoners. The Fourth Estate is responsible for advocating the needs of the other three estates, as well as framing issues so that each estate can understand them.

There is a quasi-mythical attribution of the term to Edmund Burke, which Jeffrey Archer summed up in his novel, The Fourth Estate:

In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the Estate General. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.'