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The hed, a play off the name of the new club (the Blue Diamond Cabaret), has triggered a spate of angry letters to the editor from students, staff, and alumni.  Even faculty within the university’s School of Media and Strategic Communications signed a public letter of condemnation sent to the paper.  It was published Friday in the opinion section.

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As a portion of it reads, “This sophomoric attempt at humor by using a slang term for a part of a woman’s anatomy undermines the credibility of everyone associated with the Daily O’Collegian.  Journalists must work every day to earn this credibility.  Once it’s lost, it’s hard to recover.“

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My take: The letter is odd, and beneath its faculty senders.  However well-intentioned the missive may have been, there is absolutely no reason why it should have been sent to the paper for public consumption.  O’Colly staff are already learning their lesson, taking flak from critics everywhere, and most likely reexamining their editing practices (or at least their use of puns).  They don’t need their own professors, advisers, and mentors piling on.

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Yes, the O’Colly is independent, but I will intellectually arm wrestle any OK State prof. who denies the paper’s connection to the media school.  Some of its staffers are the school’s students.  Bits of its content undoubtedly first come to life in the school’s classes.  And the school and paper certainly exist together in the minds of most OK State individuals when the words ‘university journalism’ are spoken.

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In the journalism universe I inhabit, you stand by your students.  You PRAISE in public and criticize in private.  You also very carefully decide when to stand aside, stage a battle or wage a full war.  This letter, with its highfalutin tone, public airing, and long list of names, is a full war.  Dear lord, people, it was a single shoddy header.

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As the paper’s opinion editor C.J. Cavin very rightfully asked, “Since when did it become the role of our faculty and mentors to demand an apology for making a mistake?  In my opinion, mentors and professionals take time to explain mistakes and instead of calling you out they pull you aside to explain the issue.”

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The 90-second recap: Patrick Witt, the quarterback of the Yale University football team, had been hailed as a hero this past fall for an all-around awesome pedigree that included stellar athletics and top-notch academic work.  His achievements earned him a Rhodes Scholarship finalist interview, which he famously turned down to lead Yale in a rivalry game against Harvard.

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Yet, late this week, The New York Times reported this Disney-ish story arc may have been a farce.  He had allegedly already been removed from Rhodes consideration due to a sexual assault complaint made against him, something the school may have hid even as it continued publicizing his heroic image.  From the beginning, Yale Daily News editors also knew about the sexual assault situation and decided to not report it.

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In an email posted on Romenesko, former Yale Daily News opinion editor Alex Klein took the paper’s leadership to task for sitting on the allegations.  He called the story hold disappointing and “complicit in Yale’s culture of secrecy surrounding sexual assault.”  Subsequent criticisms began pouring in from the public and within the media community.  For example, among the tags labeling a related blog post on IvyGate is two words: “Terrible Journalism.“

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Then, Witt released a statement proclaiming innocence and criticizing media innuendo.  The Yale Daily News published an explanatory blog post, mentioning at one point “to be fair to all those involved and the process they had adhered to, and because the nature of the complaint meant that all its details remain allegations, the News chose not to print a story.”  These have been followed by a second wave of stories and public reactions changing the larger narrative arc– criticizing the New York Times article as slight and one-sided and applauding the Yale Daily News for restraint.

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For example, in a Washington Post column, Kathleen Parker excoriates the Times for what she describes as pitchfork journalism.  In her words:

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“[I]n fact, no one seems to know much of anything, and no one in an official capacity is talking.  The only people advancing this devastating and sordid tale are ‘a half-dozen [anonymous] people with knowledge of all or part of the story.’  All or part?  Which part?  As in, ‘Heard any good gossip lately?’ . . . The Times apparently didn’t know [various important] facts, but shouldn’t it have known them before publishing the story?  It’s not until the 11th paragraph that readers even learn about the half-dozen anonymous sources.  Not until the 14th paragraph does the Times tell us that ‘many aspects of the situation remain unknown’ . . . Translation: We don’t know anything, but we’re smearing this guy anyway.”

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Without exaggeration, this incident is ethically dizzying, and deserves further inspection and debate.  Questions, big questions, still abound.  The 10 currently fighting for attention in my headspace:

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1) Did the Yale Daily News abdicate its journalistic responsibility by failing to follow up on the charge when first learning about it last fall?

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2) Did the paper in any way kowtow to the school or the student body’s love of its star quarterback in its decision to refrain from publishing a story?

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3) Or did YDN staff act with the utmost integrity, declining to smear a public figure based on the slightest of charges and with no apparent corroborating information available?

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4) Is Klein, the former YDN opinion editor, a hero for calling out what he sees as an ethical lapse of enormous proportions, even when it involves members of an organization he had dedicated himself to serving?

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5) Or is his email to Romenesko the epitome of unprofessional, a rush to judgment, and an airing of grievances that are not backed up by facts or a suitably stringent effort to first speak privately with his former YDN colleagues?

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6) Should all of us have trusted Klein as blindly as we did when reporting on his accusations, considering he is not a current staffer; admits only learning of the paper’s decision hours before he wrote the accusatory email; and does not know many of the details that led to the paper’s decision, including the editors’ motivation?

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7) Is this incident simply further proof of a news culture that spotlights those who speak first and loudest versus those who may be most helpful and in the know?

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8) Separately, did the New York Times publish a story that deserves to be told, placing a proper spotlight on a small lie (why the Rhodes interview was turned down) and a larger one (any sort of cover-up by the school to continue burnishing Witt’s heroic image)?

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9) Or has the paper unethically tarred and feathered a guy based on scant sourcing and a ton of unknown facts?

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10) Is a massive overhaul needed in the way sexual assault complaints are reported, on college campuses and within the press?

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The basic question at the debate’s core: Should students be allowed to work for multiple, possibly competing campus media at the same time?

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The reason behind the debate: The editor-in-chief of J-School Buzz, the hyperlocal news site covering Mizzou’s j-school, recently resigned due to a conflict of interest related to her work on The Columbia Missourian, a local daily staffed by professionals, profs, and Mizzou students.

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A Missourian policy, fairly recently updated, notes, “Work for other local media by Missourian paid staff or students in staff classes (reporting, copy editing, design, photography, photo editing, graphics, etc.) is prohibited. Local media include daily and weekly newspapers and related websites in our circulation area, campus newspapers and competing broadcast outlets.

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In a post about the resignation, J-School Buzz founder David Teeghman describes the policy as antiquated in a modern media environment boasting many, many outlets– especially ones that offer students the potential for picking up different skills.

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In his words, “[The EIC who resigned] would have learned a few things as JSB’s editor-in-chief that she will never learn at the Missourian. She won’t learn much there about analytics, what content generates traffic and buzz, the difference between stories an audience ‘wants’ and ‘needs,’ how to run a popular news blog, how to respond to critical commenters and tweeters you know personally, how to keep a site running when it gets a rush of unexpected traffic, and so on.”

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While his post makes the Missourian seem like the bad guy, the comments section clarifies and fights back on numerous points– arguing that Missourian staffers DO learn the skills Teeghman says they won’t and that STUDENTS were actually the group most in favor of enacting strict conflict of interest policies.

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My take: Conflicts of interest are often unavoidable in collegemediatopia.  Some of the classics: the student working in the school’s PR office while wanting to report for the newspaper; the student joining a frat while wanting to write about an event that involves Greek organizations; the history major who finds herself editing a story involving a dust-up between history profs and the administration; and the student keeping an indy Tumblr blog while writing for the school magazine on similar issues.

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Each potential conflict must be addressed on its merits.  And while most policies and idealists have their hearts in the right place, the truth is always murkier and in need of wiggle room.  Teeghman is correct in the overall implication that independent student media tend to get short shrift in conflict-of-interest fights when pitted against long-established, school-affiliated behemoths.  But in this instance, I don’t personally see any Orwellian plot to keep J-School Buzz down.  Let the debate continue!

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The Daily Campus at Southern Methodist University very recently published its endorsements for three student body representative positions.  In a letter to the editor written in response, an SMU student argues that such endorsing is a step too far: ”Though I would not attack the editorial board’s unbiased approach to interviewing and endorsing candidates, the fact remains that more than likely the members of the board had personal relationships with candidates or those close to the candidates which, due to human nature, affected their endorsements, whether consciously or unconsciously. This article is a humble suggestion from a student who believes in the power of a student-run news source but would hope that the Daily Campus in the future would show respect to the candidates and to the student body by advertising the candidates and the issues, not their personal opinions.”

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This is a timeless ethical issue in collegemediatopia, and worthy of consideration every now and again.  The student’s concerns strike at the heart of the two main trouble spots of student newspaper endorsements: 1) In a hyper-local environment like a college campus, it is inevitable for paper staffers to have a personal relationship with student government candidates or be friends of friends (or enemies of enemies) or simply have some sort of ‘insider’ information on them.

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2) Student journalists’ identities are often overlaid or might shift at a moment’s notice- from student to classmate to housemate to athlete to student organization board member to Greek lifer to student employee in the office of communications- much more than a professional journo.  This shifting presents numerous potential conflict of interest issues (real or perceived) when deciding on candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.

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The Daily Campus editorial board admirably responded to the concerned students’ respectful letter.  In an editorial headlined simply “Why We Endorse Candidates,” one editor noted, “It is our job to consider the positions and leadership abilities of the candidates and make a fair and objective decision. We hope in this way to give SMU students a context and point of view to consider as they decide whom to vote for.”

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In my opinion, the main reasons these endorsements can and should continue:

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1) The student paper is entrusted as the voice of the students, delivering information or commentary on every issue imaginable.  Student government does not get a pass.  As the Daily Campus editorial states, “The function of the editorial board is to issue opinions on behalf of the newspaper.  Not issuing an opinion in student body elections . . . would be a waste of the board.”

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2) Student government candidates have the potential to exert tremendous influence on campus.  Apart from star athletes and popular profs, they are probably the most well-known people on campus.  They are, in effect, public figures.  We are not talking about endorsements of candidates for student drama club recording secretary or something similarly off the radar.

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3) Student editors regularly wrestle with major ethical issues, making a conflict of interest recusal decision easy enough.

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4) An endorsement is a recommendation, not a command- and it is not (necessarily) a criticism of the competition.

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5) The paper has an opinion section.  If you do not agree with a particular set of endorsements, write in and make your own.  This is a point the Daily Campus piece powerfully drives home.

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As Heilman declares about students’ partial support of the Kansan: “To me, this is one of the most inappropriate relationships Student Senate has with any other outside group. . . . The parallel to me would be if Congress stepped in and said The New York Times is about to go under and we think they are an important news source so we are going to fund them, but then we are going to expect them to provide unbiased coverage of us.“

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While it seems Heilman’s intentions are pure (i.e. he is not simply reacting to negative coverage of his presidency), his argument is off-base, unreasonable or just plain wrong on numerous counts:

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1) The Student Senate is NOT the entity supporting the Daily Kansan.  It is the student body providing the support.  The Senate merely reviews that support.

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2) The Daily Kansan is NOT an outlier.  As Tully Corcoran argues in a Topeka Capital-Journal blog, “[P]retty much every student paper in the country operates at least partially on funding from its university. . . . Everyone doing it doesn’t make it right. But the funding does make [publishing the papers] possible, which in this context is the whole point.” In this respect, the funding is helping student journalists learn a craft, engage in an activity that enriches themselves and the campus, and enjoy a more well-rounded collegiate experience.  These are what student fees are meant to accomplish, and were accomplishing, until Heilman decided to solve a ‘problem’ that does not need fixing- which leads me to point three.

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3) The Daily Kansan is one of the best college newspapers in the country (heck, in the world).  As someone who covers collegemediatopia closer than anyone else in this world, I have come across absolutely no reports of an unethical relationship between the paper and student senate and no instances of student disgust at the DK or a push for a change in its student fees funding.  As student body president, Heilman’s role should be representing the students’ voice, not dictating his own agenda based on his own personal beliefs.  In that respect, the two most telling words in the quote I’ve included above, repeated twice, are ‘To Me’.  First lesson for any student body prez: It’s NOT about you.

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4) The fees are incredibly low per student, but incredibly important for the newspaper.  According to the Kansan: “Malcolm Gibson, general manager of the Kansan, said the campus media fee served as a student subscription to the Kansan. The fee breaks down to 1.8 cents per issue that students pay to receive a copy of the Kansan every day. ‘We have the smallest professional staff in the Big 12,’ Gibson said. ‘And the lowest support from student body than anybody in the Big 12 by far.’ (See the excellent graphic below for just how tiny a slice the campus media fee etches into the total student fees breakdown.)

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Graphic by Melissa Johnson, Daily Kansan

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Mike Wacker ’10 is a Sun columnist whose ‘Wack Attack’ column appears alternate Wednesdays. Wacker recently arranged to speak with Andrew Brokman ’11, an at-large representative in the Student Assembly, to discuss something that came up during an S.A. meeting. During their conversation, Wacker started taking notes; Brokman then told him that it was not on the record.   This dispute arose over the nature of the discussion and whether it could be attributed to Brokman. Brokman told me via e-mail that he thought Wacker was coming to him not as a columnist but as a concerned constituent. He was under the impression that their discussion was to be a private one between representative and student, and nothing more.

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The bigger question the Brockman-Wack brouhaha raises: When does the student part end and the student journalist part begin? Students inhabit a uniquely hyperlocal universe while enrolled at university, one in which their identities are often overlaid or might shift at a moment’s notice- from student to classmate to housemate to athlete to student organization board member to Greek lifer to student employee in the office of communications.

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As Tricchinelli writes, “Professional journalists generally have few other roles in their lives; they report stories and their personal lives are separate. As college students, however, the likelihood is higher for Sun journalists to be part of campus groups and organizations; the chance of them being involved in what the Sun covers is quite high.”  As evidenced by the Cornell saga, even an arranged sitdown can cause issues in a real world setting and new media realm in which everyone is always someone else simultaneously.

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Case in point: Brokman, student government representative, is also a student journalist of sorts.  He is the co-creator and overseer of OneCornell Media, an online “uncensored voice of Cornell students.”  So technically of course, he could write about Wack coming to write about him, and so on and so on.

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What do you think?

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Late last week, the editor of the Koala, a controversial UCSD student humor newspaper “everyone loves to hate,” used the phrase “ungrateful n***ers” (the derogatory term for African Americans) while speaking on the publication’s campus television program. The on-air n-word stirred student anger already brewing over a controversial campus party, called the “Compton Cookout,” whose main theme was an overt mockery of Black History Month. (One report: “An invitation to the party urged participants to dress and act like ‘ghetto chicks’ by speaking loudly, starting fights and wearing cheap clothes.”)

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Apparently the Koala has a history of, ahem, boundary pushing, on air and in print.  As the San Diego Union-Tribune notes, “In years past, Koala TV has been temporarily unplugged at least once for airing pornographic material.  The Koala publication has poked fun at Muslims, Latinos and Asians for years, and has been repeatedly criticized by the administration.”  On its homepage, a current message brazenly makes fun of the brouhaha and the outrage it has sparked, including this faux admonition: “The Koala would like to condemn the organizers of the Compton Cookout. If history has shown us anything, you need more black people at your party to have enough black-on-black violence to actually justify the  name ‘Compton.’   Shame on you.  SHAME.”

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The cover of the current Koala issue.

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While the UCSD administration attempts to calm an understandably enraged minority student contingent, the student government is irrationally pulling pursestrings- temporarily suspending the school’s student media funding.  Not just funding for the Koala, but 33 student media outlets at the university.

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My head cocked to the left in confusion as I read about this action, and I have not yet come across an explanation suitable enough to straighten it back up. As best as I can tell, it seems to be a political maneuver meant to placate angry students by showing their concerns about racism have engendered prompt action, along with being an act of recognition that student media played a part in the current “emergency state.”  As the student government president said, “In any game where the players are getting hurt, you hit the pause button.” The problem though is that this pause has terrible free press consequences.

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The Guardian, the UCSD student newspaper, which is not funded by the university, penned a fantastic editorial response, noting in part: “Because [the student government president] is aware it’s near impossible to seek immediate alternative funds, he therefore must be aware he is essentially censoring all existing publications. . . . If there’s one thing the American Civil Liberties Union and Vice Chancellor of Student Life Penny Rue (not to mention any good therapist) can agree on, it’s that more speech- not less- is most beneficial to a hurting community.”

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Or in other words, to borrow from the Koala‘s current online message: “Shame on you.  SHAME.”

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(Note: This is the second free press issue this semester involving UC student governments.  Read about the other one here.)

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In a comment to the editorial online, a former Toreador managing editor explained: “When we first created it, we thought it would be a constant presence to remind students of the toll of war. The beauty of the toll was that its number never lied. There was no spin or bias behind those four digits. The numbers told the story, and readers were left to interpret their meaning.”

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At the time, depending on the reader, the tally’s prominent placement in the paper was interpreted, ironically, as either pro-military spin or anti-Bush bias. Presently, with editors attributing its removal to President Obama’s Iraqi withdrawal pledge, the latter criticism is cropping up as most common in online comments.

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According to the editorial: “The decision to remove it came after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq by 2011 and focus attention to Afghanistan. . . . At a time when the United States is engaged in multiple foreign conflicts, the editorial board feels it [the death toll] no longer serves readers as it once did.”

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One commenter’s comeback: “You mean to say the United States is engaged in so much war and loss that it serves no purpose to track war and loss? . . . You’re taking down the death toll at a time when you should be expanding it to include such an important escalating theater where Obama is sending more troops: Afghanistan.  Or include contractor deaths (which everyone forgets).  Or coalition troops.  Most [of] the deaths occurring in Afghanistan are college-aged men and women, yet you guys feel it’s not topical or relevant or serves any purpose to college-aged readers?”

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My take: The Toreador team is truly in a tough spot, one they must expect, respect, and build upon journalistically.  If running the death toll in the first place four years ago caused such a brouhaha (even a Student Government resolution attempting to remove it!), current staff must have realized that dropping it was also not going to slip past the dogs of war.  So embrace the controversy!  Run competing editorials.  Publish a story about eds. at professional papers who have run or still run similar features.  Spotlight a Q&A with military experts about the difficulty of keeping a concrete death count in an era of modern warfare in which the fighting locations and starting and end dates are constantly subject to change (“Mission Accomplished” banners aside). The tally may now be gone, but the conversation about its meaning does not have to end.

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A recent Facebook status update from the College of Journalism and Communications Dean John Wright: “One thing is certain. Plagiarism will not be tolerated at the College of Journalism and Communications.”  (By the way, if Wright also tweets, he is officially nominated for “The Coolest Dean … Ever Award.”)

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Students commenting on a UF media class blog had this to say:

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“I’m pissed, too! I worked so hard to get into UF because it is one of the best J-schools in the country! Now, what would have gotten my resume put on top of the pile (my hard earned effing degree) will just invoke a wary glance as it gets tossed in the ‘maybe’ pile. This girl lied to keep herself in a position she clearly wasn’t qualified for– if you can’t stand the heat (ie: write your own sh*t), stay out of the newsroom.”

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“[T]his is really ridiculous why would she do blatant dumbass thing like that i mean plagiarism is messed up any way you slice it but its the ny times man balls to that!”

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“I also believe that Hailey did a very stupid thing by thinking she could get away with plagiarizing in a daily read newspaper. On the other hand, I do not think that it will cause everyone to think that now every journalism student at UF does the same thing and cause job problems. It was also just in the paper today that a UF student shot and killed someone, that does not mean that now everyone looks down on UF because we are murderers. I believe it is just a minor set back and it will be forgotten shortly.”

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My take: Let’s all be chill for a minute.  The girl got caught.  She’s being (quite fairly) excoriated across the Web, which is of course not so fun in the age of the blogosphere.  It looks like she’s also rightly heading for expulsion-town, showing there is some justice left in J-ville.  Mighty Mac Arthur has struck out, and she will (and SHOULD) be shut out from any future jobs requiring truth and ethics.  The closest she will ever get to a New York Times job is delivering them.  She is also very young, the part that gives me pause prior to simply wanting to scream at her.  Yes, her blog bio hints at uber-narcissism (Hi, I’m an award-winning journalist…) and with a few internships and other gigs under her belt this was no babe in the woods.  But she is still (or soon, was) a student. Hopefully she has learned a lesson that will stay with her forever (sort of like the Google results for searches of her name that will forever be beyond embarassing).  In the meantime, Alligator peeps, you better start checking the archives.  Plagiarists tend to be serial creeps.

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According to a Gawker report (sent my way by a distressed UF lover), Hailey Mac Arthur stole scraps from four NYT stories covering everything from sheep shearing to homelessness and spun them as her own for publication in The Colorado Springs Gazette.  In an editor’s note, Mac Arthur’s overseer at the Gazette labeled the shoddy journalism a true “breach of trust.”  Here’s an example he gave of her stolen work:

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Mac Arthur story in Gazette, July 2, “Bicycle safety a hit-or-miss proposition in Springs”

From the vantage point of a bicycle, the city presents itself as a panorama passing by at a speed somewhere between the blur outside a car window and the plodding pace of walking.

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Random New York Times story, Oct. 3, 2004, “Spin city“

From the vantage point of a bike, the city presents itself as a savorable panorama passing by at a speed somewhere between the blur outside a car window and the plodding pace of walking.

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Spot the similarities?  Gawker is the first and certainly won’t be the last to make the Mac Arthur-Maureen Dowd comparison.  (For those stuck on no-journalism-allowed-island recently, Dowd faced scrutiny in May for penning a column that contained an eerily similar passage to a piece posted on a popular blog.)

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Here’s Gawker‘s take: ”Perhaps the ultimate irony in all of this is that young Hailey Mac Arthur’s writing seems to have some Maureen Dowd-ish qualities to it, no? Too bad Mac Arthur couldn’t get away with concocting some sort of ridiculous ‘my friend told it all to me over the phone’ excuse like Dowd so famously did back in May when she plagiarized TPM’s Josh Marshall. If there’s any justice in the world maybe the Times will give Hailey Mac Arthur her second chance. After all, everyone does deserve one.”

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According to the bio on Mac Arthur’s blog, (a cached version, since, as Gawker confirmed, she’s privatized the blog and erased her profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn) she’s preparing for a trip to Brazil in the fall as part of a UF advanced journalism practicum.  Interesting side question: Should a student’s j-misdeeds as an intern (while representing the university) impact her class standing or enrollment in any way???