There’s been some embarrassing news coming from The Maneater, the college newspaper at Mizzou where I worked all through college. The staff published an April Fool’s Day issue, a tradition at the paper, but this year’s went way too far and was vulgar and offensive to just about everyone.
Because I was in Columbia until pretty recently, and because I care about the paper a lot, I’ve kept tabs on how things have been going there over the past couple years and my understanding of this situation is that it’s the culmination of an entire year of poor judgments and missteps on the part of the executive editors. The editorial board, in a statement, confirms this. The April Fool’s issue led to the editor-in-chief and managing editor both resigning, something that is unprecedented at The Maneater and has led to a lot of concern and confusion for the staff and a lot of the alumni I know.
I’ll put a list of links about this situation at the end of this post so people can read and make their own judgments, but my feelings about this haven’t changed a whole lot since the whole thing started. As with any crisis situation, it’s hard, as an outsider, to really understand all the factors that were in play in the newsroom over the last couple days. The ed board’s statement clarifies it a bit, and confirms some of my suspicions about what went on. But given the record of problems and miscommunications and bad decisions that happened over the course of the year, I understand the ed board’s decision to push impeachment and the executive editors’ decisions to resign. It was clear they had lost the confidence of their staff, which would have made the rest of the year very difficult for them; it was clear the paper had lost the confidence of the MU community, which would have made the staff’s jobs much harder for the time being if the executive team didn’t take some sort of quick, decisive action to either remedy the situation or distance themselves from it as the faces of the organization. With it being the end of the year, and the leadership team for next year already being in place, I can see where it would be a logical option to step aside and let the new team take over and build off of a fresh start.
A group of my fellow Maneater alums are circulating a letter in support of the paper as an institution, asking that the paper not take the fall for the problems and that the university retain the paper’s editorial integrity and independence and respect its traditions. The MU administration doesn’t seem to be interested in threatening any of those things, since the university’s publication’s board met and basically just told them to be more careful next time (they were meeting to decide the future of the editor-in-chief and managing editor’s jobs, but they’d already resigned, so there wasn’t much left to do). And I have difficulty putting my name on the letter because of that.
There isn’t a threat from the university any more. The letter was originally much more strongly worded to condemn the resignation of the executive editors, and for the reasons I listed above, I don’t think I agree with that. But also, the letter talks a lot about The Maneater as a learning paper, and the lessons that can be learned from this being paramount. That’s true, in a sense, but being a learning paper is an excuse that only goes so far. When your mistakes become a pattern, instead of getting better, you’re not learning. And there is a valuable lesson in accountability that can be learned from this situation. Take responsibility for your actions. Sometimes the consequences for your actions are severe, particularly when you’ve taken on a leadership role. But you have to live with those consequences. I don’t think the paper’s status as a learning institution has been weakened by this, I don’t think the paper’s independence or integrity are under threat, and I don’t think that being a student newspaper is an excuse for the series of mistakes the staff has made this year. And that’s why I’m not keen on signing the letter.
This whole situation really makes me sick because I love the paper so much. I learned a lot there, not just about journalism but about being a leader, and making sound decisions, and how to comport myself in a professional setting. I met some of my best friends there, and we had some really great times. But we can’t let those sentimental feelings get in the way of the realities that The Maneater is also a working newspaper, and a business that has to stay relevant and solvent in order for MU students in the future to have those same experiences we did. The executive team took the action they thought would best help the paper do that, and now the new team will have to rebuild. Best of luck to them. And hopefully they’ve learned a lot from how this all has been handled.
Links:
This is just a selection of the many stories out there about the situation.
Resignation Letters:
http://www.themaneater.com/blogs/the-newsroom/2012/4/11/apology-and-letter-resignation/
http://www.themaneater.com/blogs/the-newsroom/2012/4/10/letter-resignation/
Apology Letter:
http://www.themaneater.com/blogs/the-newsroom/2012/4/6/letter-editor/
News stories:
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/04/11/3548310/mu-newspaper-editor-resigns-amid.html
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2012/apr/11/maneater-editors-resign-after-parody-edition-flap/
Another Obamacare post
NOTE: I accidentally posted this in the wrong place so it was just made public today (3/29) but it’s back-dated to when it was originally written. Many apologies. There were technical issues at play.
I only got about a quarter of the way through this commentary by former Sen. Tom Daschle before I was too angry to keep reading because of this comment:
Forced responsibility isn’t responsibility. It’s an indenture, of sorts. Responsibility is something you recognize and take care of on your own. Mandates can force you to do a lot of things, but they don’t force you to do that.