Here’s a riddle for you. What happens when you get a bunch of freaks that know how to read and write? A pain in the neck for ignorant “journalists.” I’m a freshman, and to be truthful, until last Tuesday I never picked up the school newspaper. There are many reasons for this fact. For one thing the newspaper doesn’t contain anything aside from the sports section that interests the general body of this school. Whatever happened to movie and concert reviews? The other reason why I didn’t read it was confirmed on Tuesday when I actually decided to read it. The articles are poorly researched and in some cases are far from the truth, like the C-store article I unfortunately had to respond to on Friday.
Instead of writing about why some people on the paper are upset that they lost their jobs they should have written things that the students of the university actually care about. From the two newspapers that I have read, almost half the articles have offended someone along the way. Whether it’s trashing student government or calling the people at Ticketmaster freaks, they manage to put down someone. Being a pre-law student, I have learned about the constitution and I’m a firm believer of absolute freedom of speech (which is controversial in itself). However, when writing for a school newspaper, I would think you have the paper’s integrity to preserve.
As for the articles, it’s sad when the articles written in the opinion section by non-journalism majors have a higher caliber of writing then the actual writers of the paper. With run-on sentences, major grammatical errors, and articles printed twice under different names, what is the point of having an editor anyway? I’m not claiming to be a journalism expert (I mean I’m just a stupid freshman, majoring in business), but I am pretty sure that it is the editor’s job to check that sort of thing. In my opinion, an editor change may make this newspaper more enjoyable to read and it might also make it better than my high school’s paper.
Justin Diamond