Demos: I Smashed Their Theiving, Greedy Blackened Halos

The title, as should not surprise you, comes from a Crime In Stereo song called XXXX (The First Thousand Years of Solitude). A writer in an upstart campus magazine Overkill who had also written occasionally for the school newspaper called the Campus (unimaginative, I know) and called the Campus a bunch of names and suggesting that the newspaper wasn't doing its job.

I took umbrage and this was my response.

Hello, Penelope. About your Overkill piece. It brings up a couple points I think have been brought up by a lot of other people, so I'm responding to this publicly. A newspaper ought to speak to its audience directly in one place, the editorial, which I presume you understand, is written by the editorial board. I don't pretend to speak for them.

That out of the way, let me take a critical eye to your piece. "In a nutshell, our college newspaper could be accomplished by high school students: current events, opinions, videogames, movies and sports. The thing with high school newspapers is that we expect that same repetitive quality."

My first question is a simple one: Do you know what a newspaper does? That the Campus responds to events and publishes the opinions of the media that surrounds the students is one of the definitions of a newspaper. So does every other paper, ever. Look at the New York Times, which is the standard for this medium. They report on current events and sports and they solicit informed opinions on things like videogames and movies.

There isn't anything left for the Campus (or any other newspaper) to write about if we didn't look at current events and opinions on media. What you want appears to be a magazine (like Harper's or Mother Jones, but let me know if I'm wrong or putting words in your mouth), which you published in (Might I suggest buying a subscription?) and currently needs money to continue publishing. If your question is why the Campus' writing isn't up to a standard you'd prefer, there's a lot to publish by a small amount of people.

"I have personally lowered myself to contributing to The Campus on a number of occasions. The last thing I expected to see was the editors had changed my title, edited my content and deleted my intent. How can taking someone else's words and tampering with their material and length be justified?"

How are an editing process and space constraints on a title draconian? I think It's perfectly reasonable for us to look over what we publish under their banner and look out for things that could get us or Allegheny sued. Speaking of which:

"The Campus is completely against vocalizing what students really want to say...They edit out the most opinionated, in some cases, the most important parts of articles, attributing their reasons to space. If space is the issue why don't they ask the writers what they want to edit?"

We have an open office during deadline night (5 p.m.-past 9 p.m. Wednesday) in which the authors are welcome to come in and look over their piece before it goes to the printer. If you want to be in the room when the editor goes over your piece, then show up in the room. As for the "most opinionated, most important" parts, since this is a hell of a charge to level against the paper (and I don't know which pieces you're referring to specifically), I am going to guess because we can't publish libel or slander. The libel of being "against vocalizing what the students want to say" that's intriguing, given that you cite absolutely nothing in defense of the defamation.

"But just think: a literary work where students could look to voice opinions and view aesthetically pleasing pictures - that would be OK."

There is a place where literary work and aesthetically pleasing pictures can be viewed and it's called Overkill (and hopefully Golem!) If I haven't mentioned this before, newswriting and literary writing are very, very different. Pictures too. The reason why there is a journalism track is an offshoot of the English track is because the two kinds of writing are incredibly different and require two different uses of the same tool, the written word to achieve different aims.

"A newspaper should be a loudspeaker to the student, a pulpit to the crowd."

We disagree. The purpose of a newspaper, in my estimation, is to be the voice of truthfulness, accuracy and avoid distortion. The Campus ought to be the person in the crowd telling you what you can reasonably believe from the person speaking at the pulpit. There's enough loudspeakers and pulpits that I particularly enjoy when an Allegheny outlet speaks softly.

I hope this answers the questions you have. If not, my email is at the bottom of this piece or find me in the office during deadline night.