Admissions Office Hides Student Papers with “Craigslist Killer” Stories

The connection of the so-called “Craigslist Killer” to Boston University has been publicly reported worldwide, but the BU Admissions Office would rather not remind potential students and their parents coming to campus for a visit.  Instead, certain admissions staffers have decided to literally hide the free press, removing from public view all issues of The Daily Free Press student newspaper that contain front page stories about good ol’ CK.

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Of course, in the time it takes to say Facebook Status Update, students employed in the office revealed the deceptive plot, mentioning in one FB thread: “‘[T]he freep [Free Press] is out sometimes, but [admission staffer’s name removed]’s been screening it to make sure that med student’s story is not in it before they put it out.’  He continues in saying that there is a ‘huge pile’ of newspapers in the back room for this reason. . . . [Another student wrote] ‘Everytime ive been there its been in the back even when it wasn’t talking about the med student. the last time i remember the paper being out when there was a story on the hockey team winning the national championship.’”

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When, oh when, will over-zealous administrators with underwhelming PR-savvy learn that in the Internet age all acts of censorship or deception will come to light and cause more harm than good?  In this case, the office’s CK-news hideaway has prompted unfavorable news coverage, allegations of possible legal wrongdoing, and public shame-on-you statements by the university’s college of communications dean and a representative of the Student Press Law Center. 

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Lantern Going Dark on Fridays at Ohio State

The Lantern at Ohio State University will shutter its Friday print edition come fall, joining the growing number of TGI F-ed student papers nationwide (via The Paper Trail).

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As summed up by a staffer, the recent story of The Lantern has been bleak: “More than three years ago, The Lantern cut circulation from 28,000 to 15,000. Last summer the paper ended its print publication, and in fall 2009, the Friday print edition will be eliminated.”

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Amid the darkness, there is a slight print-and-ink bright spot: The A&E section has recently expanded into its own weekly edition, called btw, which has enjoyed much-needed ad growth so far.

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Student Newspaper’s New Policy: No Comments Allowed

The Daily Egyptian at Southern Illinois University Carbondale has disabled the comments feature that follows all stories run on its Web site.  In a note to readers (which I first found via UWIRE), top editor Allison Petty wrote that the mean-spirited, at-times slanderous “sexism, racism, immaturity and malice” being posted had overwhelmed the constructive dialogue and left DE editors without an argument as to why comments should be allowed at all.

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The kickers, according to Petty, included: an extreme spewing of vitriol at the newspaper in the comments section for its recent coverage of the murders of three members of a DE staffer’s family (apparently some students felt it was self-indulgent); and a comment calling a black student leader an “ape.”  Petty: “Congratulations. It is not easy to offend college students who spend most of their time in a newsroom, but some of you have persevered, pursuing standards of bad taste to depths so subterranean we could not help but take note.”

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I give the newspaper credit.  It takes courage to stand up and call out the very readership you represent.  The no-comments stance undoubtedly raises an important larger point: Does the comments portion of journalism’s new media adventure need an overhaul?  It’s certainly true that on many student and professional outlets’ sites, the comments after articles tend to amount to little more than the type-and-click version of graffiti, playground bullying or drunken-Mel-Gibson-type-rants.  Sometimes they are funny.  Sometimes they rightfully call out an article’s failings.  Sometimes they are better written or more insightful than the article itself.  Often, however, they are just nonsensical, vindictive, and not worthy of the news outlet or even the commenters who are usually too cowardly to sign their names.

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What’s the answer?  Should all comments require names and basic identifying information similar to that which is needed for old-fashioned letters to the editor (remember those?)?  Should each comment require approval by editors, similar to the WordPress template?  Should the comments feature only be used for certain stories or in certain sections such as opinions?  (For a blog, comments seem helpful, necessary even, in the spirit of conversation and interaction.  But I have personally never seen the relevance of allowing comments after a news story- and if you notice, neither does The New York Times).

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Petty sums up her perspective beautifully, mostly Shakespeare, with a bit of Dave Barry at the end:

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Words are the currency of journalists, the sacrament of writers. Words are incredible, versatile things. They can build bridges or burn them; make people laugh or make them cry; rouse nations or render them speechless. The ability to read the newspaper, to make sense of a sentence, to take pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and communicate your thoughts – this is a priceless gift. Grow up and stop squandering it. And sign your freaking name.

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What do you think???  (Be the first to comment on this post!)

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UWIRE 100: Honoring College Media Cream of the Crop

99 + 1.  1,000 – 900.  10 x 10.   300 / 3.  Any way you add, subtract, multiply or divide it, the answer is the same: 100.  It is fast becoming the most famous number in collegemediatopia, especially when attached to UWIRE, an evermore iconic brand name.  

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The 2009 edition of the UWIRE 100 has gone public, sporting the now-familiar mugshot motley crew of college journalists and media innovators.  Why are the select few featured below smiling?  Because they just joined the college media eliterati, an esteemed cream of the crop whose names are now synonymous with student journalism excellence.  (Say it with a prolonged pause between each word for greater dramatic effect.) 

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The UWIRE team’s meticulous selection process and possibly multiple sleepless nights winnowed more than 800 applicants down to the final hundred. There are eight repeat nominees, those showing up on both the ’08 and ’09 lists. Sixty nine schools are represented, with the University of Kansas boasting the most featured j-students from a single university.  A more unofficial mugshot survey reveals 65 men and 35 women; at least 15 who wear glasses; and at least five who appear to be daydreaming in CSS code during the moment their photos were taken. :-)   

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Joe Weasel, new UWIRE CEO: “This is a remarkable group of journalists.  Each has made a significant impact on the field already- they are talented, hard workers and gifted storytellers.  Each was nominated by their peers and advisers, who recognized their potential to shape the ever-changing media industry in the coming years.” 

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Special kudos to j-student extraordinaires (and those CMM proudly nominated, surely along with a few other supporters) Daniel Bachhuber, Jackie Hai, and Georgia Perry.

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Student Activist Uses Hidden Camera, YouTube to Further Anti-Abortion Cause

A college student activist on an anti-abortion crusade has employed new media (and a bit of acting) to spread her eye-opening message across the World (Wide Web).  Lila Rose, an undergraduate at UCLA, is 20 going on 13 . . . at least that’s the age she pretends to be during the half dozen “sting” operations she has carried out at Planned Parenthood clinics in four states.

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The gist: Rose goes to a Planned Parenthood with a friend.  She poses as a 13-year-old (sometimes 14) impregnated by a man she tells Planned Parenthood workers is 31, raising a statutory rape red flag warning that workers in certain instances brush aside or discuss how they can get around reporting it.  

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How do we know?  Because Rose’s friend is secretly videotaping each “sting” for placement on Rose’s Web site and YouTube.  As The Los Angeles Times notes, “Rose’s strategy- accusing Planned Parenthood of failing to report suspected statutory rapes- is not a new one in the antiabortion trenches. But the new-media twist on the idea has put her front and center of a new generation.”

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Rose is not a journalist.  She is an activist.  But the questions that her secret video reporting raises for the new generation of colleg journalists are significant and very, very real.

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Earlier this term, I asked my students here in Singapore for predictions on the future of journalism or media, mostly for fun.  One studen wrote that he envisioned a time when all our eyes, via contact lens or laser surgery, would be equipped with tiny cameras able to capture life at a blink, truly making every moment possibly YouTube-worthy. (Scary premise?  It’s closer than we might think.)

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While we’re not quite at this eye-level, the video age is reaching evermore constant, surreptitious heights.  The student journalism question: In the era of easy-to-record, one-man-band video reporting, should any academic locations, time periods or types of interactions be kept strictly off-camera or free of other real-time reporting methods such as tweeting or mobile phone photographing?

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Of course, Gen-Y journalist extraordinaire Alana Taylor at NYU earned infamy and acclaim early last fall for her real-time Twitter take-down of a professor she felt was out of touch with the new media vibe she was teaching.  The professor’s subsequent, quickly-implemented rule: No blogging, Twittering, texting or other live reporting while in class.

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The rule is a warning but certainly not legally binding at universities worldwide (as of yet) and not covering other areas of campus life. The questions then are still ethical in nature.  Do you secretly record the campus security guard sleeping on the job?  How about the professor badmouthing the controversial new curriculum during an open-door office hours chat?  Or how about the school football star partying at a local bar past team curfew?  Or the university president arriving home late one evening arm-in-arm with two women who are clearly not his wife?

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The power of video makes these ethical judgment calls especially real.  Words can be dangerous weapons, but the right video can be a veritable atomic bomb to someone or something’s credibility.  (Proof?  How about the recent disgusting Domino’s Pizza clip?)  We are living in a TMZ Twilight Zone in which videos of supposedly private moments are being more regularly accepted as worthy of public purview even when they are journalistically still abhorrent.  Future judgment calls on when to click record without warning  and, more importantly, when to post (and how to edit) the recorded bits will have to be measured ones- balancing the age-old respect of privacy with the awe-inspiring ability of new media to record ever-greater slices of life less obtrusively than ever before.

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Career Prospects, Lord Voldemort, and the Future of College Journalism

The honesty of the lead sentence is almost painful to read.  I both laughed and cringed simultaneously: “I have written this so that I can write in my CV [résumé] that ‘I wrote for the student newspaper’.”

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In a recent editorial for The Student Direct at the University of Manchester (the largest campus paper in England), Nicholas Foulis fully and almost gleefully celebrates the fact that he is not out to change the world, raise an issue, get you to think or otherwise contribute to student journalism or greater society. He simply wants to pad his resume.

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In the process, he goes behind the curtain of collegemediatopia, exposing a fact that rests at its heart but, in Harry Potter terms, is normally on par with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  According to Foulis, it is “The Whole Sordid Business Of Writing Stuff For The Student Newspaper Just To Say That You’ve Done So On Your CV.”  In his words: “People write and submit pieces for all sorts of other reasons, many of them noble I’m sure, but career prospects must be at the forefront of many a student writer’s mind.”

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It is certainly no secret that most, if not all, individuals involved in collegemediatopia regularly report, edit, and Webify the news not only for their readers and the first draft of history but for their own personal/professional gain. College media, more than any other types, boast the skills-training-résumé-boosting-contacts-making aspects of their enterprises as key enticers for students to join.  One comparison I hear a lot: college journalists and minor league baseball players, in the sense that they’re both generally young, up-and-coming, and obviously cannot help but look ahead to the major leagues of their chosen fields.

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But what about now, in our current mediated state of betwixt and between topsy-turvydom? Is “the whole sordid business” of student journalists primarily building for the future being turned on its head? College media are more professional, interactive, independent, eager and able to compete with the professional press for eyeballs and Googling fingertips than ever before.  With the new World (Wide Web) of media favoring the individual, the amateur, the upstart, and not necessarily offering a cash reward and a stable career upon graduation, has the time come for student journalists to stop thinking of collegemediatopia as a means to an end?

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My bold, if slightly far-fetched, prediction: Forget the minor league baseball analogy.  By the middle of the 21st-century, student journalists will be like the Olympians of yesteryear- young, amateur, unpaid (or lowly paid), but in the spotlight more than any other denizens of their craft (in this case, once for four years straight instead of once every four years).  With j-jobs few, fragmented, and far between in the media landscape of the future, they will pursue quality journalism not to achieve gainful post-graduation employment but for the sheer joy, camaraderie, and idealism that comes with doing it and the fulfillment of knowing they are making a difference along the way.  For many, turning pro will put their best days behind them.

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What do you think???

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J-Schools Will Play Catchup Forever in New Media Age

While it has been reported with increasing regularity by evermore news media and with ever-greater blogysteria over the past 18 months, the trend apparently did not become real until a few days ago when The New York Times said so: Journalism schools are struggling to stay ahead of the new media curve in planning their curricula and larger philosophical and practical directions.  Or in the words of the NYT story headline : “J- Schools Play Catchup.”

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My first reaction: Duh.  My second reaction: The tense is wrong.  My suggestion for a revised hed: “J-Schools WILL Play Catchup, Forever and Ever and Ever and Ever . . .“

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The most important truth j-schools (and all media outlets) need to accept: We will never be caught up again.  New media are dynamic.  Even the name, or at least the first word, hints at their always-innovating nature.  Once we conquer or devise a course to wrap our heads around some aspect of them, it is inevitable (and exciting) that something else will change.  This does not mean a quality curriculum cannot generally capture the skills and theories j-students of tomorrow will need to succeed, but the notion that we will ever again be ‘caught up’ or on top of things is a myth- one that is rooted in our experiences with old media.

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What are some foundation and fun courses that should be slotted into any new j-school curriculum?  Here is a slightly serious, slightly snarky top five:

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1) Mobile Phone Use 101: The power of a reporter’s mobile phone is already great and growing evermore infinite. This class would be a field-based exercise in mobile blogging, vlogging, photography, audio recording, interviewing, and related Web uploading, downloading, and hyperlinking.

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2) Twitter-tastic 140: The entire course would be rooted in the Twitter culture. The syllabus, assignments, class discussions, and exams would all need to fit into the bite-sized tweet format. 

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3) Investigative Reporting: A majority of blogging is personal.  A vocal minority discuss issues.  Most of those bloggers critique or expand upon reports already presented elsewhere.  For journalism to remain relevant and needed, it must continue to do the one thing the blogosphere generally does not: in-depth, long-term, beneath-the-surface ‘tough’ stories on complex individuals or issues. (A great recent example is this ESPN investigative report on former baseball great and current entrepreneurial mess Lenny Dykstra.)

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4) New Media Ethics: It is obvious even the professionals are not yet entirely sure how to handle all the issues new technology and a 24-hour news cycle hath wrought.  Students must be taught the basics, so as not to end up like Washingtonian Magazine, as reported today by CNN in this linked story and video below.

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5) Internet Famous Class: Nowadays, it’s all about getting eyeballs and Web hits in our “attention economy.”  The video below, linked here, explains it all.

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Student Paper, J-School Extend Kindness Amid Tragedy

Less than a week ago, Jeff Engelhardt, the managing editor of The Daily Egyptian student newspaper at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, faced one of the most horrific moments imaginable: learning from police that three members of his immediate family had been killed and a fourth was in critical condition. 

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Amid tragedy, there is kindness, and good journalism.  The Daily Egyptian and members of the university’s j-school have joined together to raise money for Engelhardt and his remaining family and have started a memorial fund in his name.  

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DE reporter Allison Petty also deserves kudos for writing a pitch-perfect related story on the incident.  She presents the tougher details (including a squirm-inducing one about a slit throat) without either shying away from the truth or sensationalizing.  She graciously, and bravely, sought out Engelhardt for information, no small feat considering what he must be going through and how icky all reporters feel when intruding on someone’s personal grief.  And she fully discloses Engelhardt’s connection to the newspaper, including his recent selection as incoming editor in chief (sadly occurring only a week before the killings).

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Minuteman May Be Saved By UMASS Administration

The latest imbroglio involving student press control centers on a conservative resurrection, charges of slander, and a university administration toe-to-toe with its student government. 

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The saga began in December 2008, with the re-launch of The Minuteman, a conservative student rag at UMASS, whose aim is to “expose the corruption and wastefulness that seem[s] to pervade the administration, the history, and the campus life around us.”  Not exactly an objective agenda, but certainly a relevant one given these tightfisted economic times.  (For example, a recent piece documented what the publication calls exaggerated circulation claims by The Daily Collegian student newspaper.)

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The Minuteman is independent in spirit, but not in reality.  It is published by members of The Silent Majority, a registered student organization under the general auspices of the UMASS Student Government Association.  Trouble brewed between this Majority and the SGA after a recent story that took aim at what The Minuteman argues is alleged wasteful spending by a student organization with direct SGA links (related online piece and cover of related print edition below).  Some SGA members say the coverage contains a “clear example of slanderous defamation of character, and an intentional misrepresentation of an SGA member [the leader of the student organization under attack].”  The Minuteman editor calls the article’s tone, by comparison, “jokingly mean-spirited.”

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Earlier this month, the SGA approved a motion to conditionally suspend the publication until the Minuteman‘s Silent Majority backers publish an apology ad in The Daily Collegian.   The latest twists: 1) The UMASS administration is rejecting the motion, citing some technicality mumbo-jumbo regarding how it was approved but more importantly citing the need for a free campus press.  2) An SGA member was removed from a follow-up meeting after repeatedly trying to submit a motion to overrule the previous suspension motion.  Things are getting ugly!

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The saddest part of the whole affair, to me: The wasteful spending story seems potentially important!  Yet, it has been buried by both parties in dispute.  First, shame on The Minuteman for not realizing that if you want your substance to be considered, don’t put your “jokingly mean-spirited” style foremost in the spotlight.  And shame on the SGA for engaging in what even university leaders are deeming an excessively censorious action to stop student expression. Instead, why not answer the allegations raised by the piece?  This fight will obviously continue- let’s keep it clean from here on out.  

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Opinion Editor Fired from Student Paper for Her Activism

A student newspaper firing has transformed into a bare-knuckle free-speech slug-fest at Central Connecticut State University, as The Hartford Courant reports.

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In one corner: The Recorder, the CCSU student newspaper, which publicly acknowledged removing its opinion editor from her position when her political activism became too public, undermining her ability to do her job and represent the paper objectively (or at least transparently).

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In the other corner: The opinion editor, a CCSU student with socialist leanings and an anti-war-in-Iraq bent who is (loudly) proclaiming that her firing is a censorious attempt to muzzle a student journalist’s outside interests, voice, and beliefs. 

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The first punch: According to a letter from the paper’s editorial board, the student “was not fired for her personal beliefs, values, political leanings or otherwise.” The termination, instead, arrived when she made such leanings public.  Under the paper’s ethics code, her fate was sealed in part by her signatures- specifically those she penned on various political petitions and for protests.  

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Is the paper’s call the right one? It certainly has merit. There does need to be some distance between a person’s public involvements and their chosen coverage area. The problem is as much the perception of bias as it is the existence of any actual bias that might seep into the paper. As the editorial team’s letter stated, past Recorder staffers have been forced to choose between joining the paper and student government or a campus political club.  The issue, in the end, is always one of relevance- a sports editor who signs a get-out-of-Iraq petition is one thing, an opinion editor who helps shape the political voice of the newspaper signing one and showing up at related protests truly does deserve some raised eyebrows.

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Counter-punch: The former editor is currently on a get-back-my-job-free-speech-PR-campaign.  She argues that her political views, not her actions, led to her downfall, making her termination an “attack on the freedom of speech of anyone on this campus who has ever taken a stance against racism, sexism, war, homophobia, religious intolerance, inequality or any other injustice.”

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Here’s a short video report from the Courant:

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What do you think???

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Collegemediatopia: A Comic Adventure, Episode #3

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Student Journalist Spotlight: Jackie Hai, UMASS Amherst

Jackie Hai is a hybrid- a student journalist extraordinaire with competing interests in (ready for this?) philosophy, anthropology, economics, music, physical discipline, and information technology. Growing up in greater Boston, the UMASS Amherst senior considered careers in archaeology, online game development, film, and music. The news media prevailed, and are the better for it.

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Spread the word: Hai, 21, is a journalistic and new media wunderkind who should be on anyone’s short list for collegemediatopia’s j-student of the year. She is program director and Webmaster for the UMASS campus television station. And she co-founded and currently operates The Amherst Wire, an independent online student news outlet whose aim is localization and innovation and whose potential is limitless.

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The site’s tagline: Local. New. Media.  This post has a tagline of its own: Student. Journalist. Spotlight.  The star of the show this time around, joining a growing coterie of standout collegiate journos from schools such as Harvard, Nebraska, Indiana, and NYU: Jackie Hai.

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Jackie Hai, at a UVC-TV video editing station.

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Write a six-word memoir of your Amherst Wire experience so far.

Try something new at every opportunity.

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To all the campus media haters out there: Why does Amherst Wire matter?

The Amherst Wire is an in-your-face rebuttal to the stereotype of college students living in a bubble, oblivious to what’s happening in the real world.

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What is one feature on the site you’re especially proud to have helped put together?

Market Meltdown 101 and Economic Stimulus 101 are our flagship features right now and what put us on the map. Definitely worth all the sleepless nights.  (Ed. note: The features were linked by The Boston Globe and received special mention in a recent MediaShift post.)

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Memorable behind-the-scenes production moment.

The clock was ticking down to deadline for publishing Economic Stimulus 101, and another editor and I were piecing together the whole package down at the UVC-TV station (our sister campus media outlet) late at night. When it hit us that we had way too much information to organize, we broke out the paper, pens and scissors and arranged almost a hundred little strips of paper on the table to plan our layout. The irony of resorting to the most basic of technologies in the production of a “new media” Web feature was not lost on us.

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What first sparked your passion for journalism?

I can’t pinpoint a specific moment, but the personal connections I’ve made with people in journalism and the communities we’ve touche over the last four years were a major catalyst, and what inspired me to turn this into a lifelong pursuit.

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What is the coolest part about running a standout online journalism outlet?

Having a low, low overhead and running on a flexible, open-source platform frees us to pursue pretty much any journalistic project that tickles our fancy and innovate the heck out of it.

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What is one question we should all be asking much more often about the current state or future of journalism?

It’s not who or what is going to pay for journalism, but what are the best practices of journalism- the kind that serves society and improves the world- that are worth sustaining?

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You wake up in ten years. Where are you and what are you doing?

In another city somewhere, getting ready to visit a citizen media group later that day to teach a workshop on multimedia journalism as part of their new partnership with a local news organization.

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Daily Texan Barred From Endorsing Student Candidates

In a political ruling that must have the word ridiculous buried somewhere in its bylaws, the student-led Election Reform Task Force at the University of Texas has barred The Daily Texan from endorsing student candidates.  (Thank you to a friend at UWIRE for the heads-up.)

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Why?  Because the newspaper receives student fees as a minor portion of its funding.  Read the following, and see if you can follow the logic.  According to the task force: “[S]uch endorsements, which are published on the opinion page, force candidates to monetarily support their opposition because every student is required to pay fees. . . . [As one task force member said] ‘You can’t expect another candidate who didn’t get endorsed and who pays student fees to in some ways pay for something that is detrimental to their campaign.'”

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The decision reeks of desperation and literally elicited an aloud “Eww” from me upon first learning about it.  The problems it creates are FAR greater than whatever it is they are hoping to solve:

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1) A stifling of student press freedom.  Make no mistake: This task force is effectively censoring the Texan.

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2) A loss of an important independent voice in the student election process.  Contrary to what the task force is asserting, candidates are not funding themselves or their opponents when they pay student fees that help support the Texan.  They are funding a student voice, an objective one, one whose political endorsements offer an honest, reasoned take on student politics (and politicians) of the moment.  On a campus level, the student newspaper endorsement is the closest thing we have to a credible alternative to campaign posters and lollipop-giveaway-vote-for-me shill-fests.  It’s not partisan.  It’s not paid advertising.  It’s called honesty, or at least objectivity.

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3) A slippery slope.  First, endorsements are banned from appearing in the paper, so as not to upset opposition candidates.  What’s next?  Will the paper be stopped from running negative articles on the football team because it offends fee-paying student sports fans?  Task force, take note: Censorship is NOT a road you want to begin traveling down.

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4) Students left with a bad impression of student politics and the press.  The Daily Texan is a terrific paper known nationwide for its gung-ho editorial independence.  This ban implies its endorsements somehow are tainted and that student fees allow the school to exert control over college media content.

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A word of advice to the task force: Feel free to clean up your politics.  Steer clear of the student press.  And by the way, I bet at least a tiny bit of your student fees goes toward the holding of campus elections.  So since we’re doing away with endorsements, I guess we have to stop holding the elections too, all for the same reason.  I mean, it’s not fair that the losers should have to fund an event that leads to their opponent’s victory!  Don’t understand?  Google the word ridiculous.

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Daily Nexus: “Why We Need Your Money”

In an old “West Wing” episode (Season 2.4– any other WW-junkies out there?), a leader of an AIDS-stricken African nation tells the President plainly, “It’s a terrible thing to beg for your life.”

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Avoiding uber-dramatics, it is clear that the print newspapers peopling collegemediatopia are approaching such  life-saving beggary.  The quote has come to mind numerous times over the past month as I read evermore student paper editorials that blatantly appeal to student readers, the student government, or anyone with a bag of cash walking by the university gates for mucho moola.  The latest, run in The Daily Nexus at UC-Santa Barbara, carries the most direct headline: “Why We Need Your Money.”  The piece, accompanied by an editorial cartoon in which a large octopus called “Financial Ruin” overtakes a ship bearing the Nexus name, begins:

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Next week, we’re going to ask you to do something we never thought we would have to do. . . . We definitely cringe at having to do this.  We’re going to ask you to give us more money.  The main reason we’re doing this is that, despite our best efforts, we aren’t earning enough money through advertisements to match the rising cost of producing the paper, so we have to increase our other source of income: money from the readers.

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Direct appeals for renewed or increased student fees seem to be the most popular.  (See recent Daily Kansan editorial.)  Also appearing on the scene are what I’m calling the why-we’re-here editorials.  The true message of these types of pieces seems to be in the subtext.  It’s not so much what they’re saying, but simply the fact that they exist.  Even the most confident papers apparently feel it is necessary right now to step back from their coverage to clarify what they do and why they matter, lest readers forget (especially when the time comes that funding might be needed).  It is not a direct money grab, but it is hard not to see the save-the-children-help-a-worthy-cause mentality underlying it.

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Student newspapers are so damn essential to campus life, it is almost sad for me to read these forced attempts at summing up their awesomeness in 800 words or less.  Student papers should not have to explain themselves!  It is a terrible thing to have to beg for your life.

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Should Marijuana Column Stay or Get Off The Pot?

A marijuana-themed column chiseled together by an admitted student stoner since fall 2008 in The Tufts Observer has the magazine’s public editor (journalistically) paranoid about the precedent. 

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“Going Green,” a column about pot, potheads, pot culture, and the pot legalization fight, is a regular Observer feature, written by a Tufts student using the pseudonym Reggie Hubbard and memorably (and directly) introducing himself in his first piece : “Hi, I’m a pothead.”  As he went on to write:

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I originally approached the editor with a pitch for this column because I think marijuana and the culture that surrounds it is no longer at the fringes of our society. It is no longer in jazz-dens and hippie communes. It’s in our homes, our schools, our lives.  The majority of Americans have tried it, and it’s easily available. Campus cops turn a blind eye to its use on certain days and many professors puff. Still, it is the white elephant in the room, a taboo that lead to the construction of a still expanding and, in my opinion, soon the be majority counter-culture.

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In the column, Hubbard opines with idealistic sarcasm on topics such as medicinal marijuana, pot’s economic market, and the different ways to use the drug.  As he notes in respect to the latter: “One of the awesome things about weed is how many different ways there are to consume it. Hell, today alone I’ve already smoked from a vaporizer, a small pipe, a $400 bong, and a one-hitter… but I’ve had a hard week.”

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In a recent article, the Observer‘s public editor expressed concern that, while it may be legal in students’ minds and hearts (and under Massachusetts law), marijuana is still illegal almost everywhere else nationwide.  Is a related column then basically a promotion of unlawful activity?   Or instead, as he writes, given its presence on campus, “is it a fair representation of the types of issues that are of importance to Tufts students?”

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What do you think???

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