Bizarre editorial from the Northwestern student newspaper

Meanwhile, the Wildcats will have a new helmet emblem when they play UMass Saturday:

 

Talking about or analyzing or judging or discussing race in good faith doesn't "play the race card."

In fact, using the phrase "play the race card" is telling on yourself.

That said, I'm not sure we've gotten a good, complete rendering of this story yet.

 

What do you think happened here?

 

I'm honestly not sure.

I've seen a lot of tweets and story fragments, but no global overview of what exactly happened and on what timeline.

 

I remember an SID was pissed at us once because we used the phone book to get some quotes from hockey guys after a road trip. We didn’t travel, called ‘em in their rooms Sunday afternoon for Monday edition. Not a lot of those guys lived on campus but the ones who did were in the book like everyone else.

Players didn’t blink an eyelash but the SID had a fit that we didn’t go thru him.

 

Is the paper in house or independent? If independent, don’t count on Medill faculty advisers to have a heavy hand.

This wouldn’t be on them unless they advised this kind of editorial...which I strongly doubt.

The piece - and some stories on the site - read more like the prevailing sentiments of the English department than journalism.

College campuses are not as activist as stuff like this would have you believe. They’re not.

But the English/humanities/“studies” departments? They very much are - perhaps more than ever - and they make outsized noise. Social media and the Internet amplifies that noise. It also amplifies criticism of an editorial like this, which, after all, is from a student newspaper.

Post-Missouri, the game has changed. No institution is safe, no accusation is too small. Words like “insensitive” and “problematic” carry weight and fear. A student newspaper can stand up to just about any power - except the one that threatens its progressive awareness.

 

I'm way out of the loop on the Northwestern situation. I also didn't go to J-school, so I suspect my opinion might be skewed.

Same here! I called the soccer guys' off-campus house almost every road-trip Sunday for comments. Whoever answered the landline -- yes, I'm that old -- commented, and the story was done!

The kerfuffle was volcanic when the SID found out the men's soccer coach invited me to ride along in the team van to a road game -- and I went. For the record, I did not report on what I saw in that van... most of which would not have been quite so visible in the smartphone era. <cough> porno mags <cough>

I do not recall if the SID had a similar explosion when the baseball coach invited the male beat writer on the team bus when they played at the nearby pro venue... and didn't invite me.

I guess I should've brought up my gender in both cases, but I did not. Nor did I apologize to the SID for "doing my job" as a student journalist.

 

I support all student journalists and the work they do.

However, I'm in the camp that believes the newspaper has nothing to apologize.
Removing quotes and pictures because people are concerned about their privacy?
Give me a fucking break. If you, as a student, don't want to be quoted in a news
story, then speak up.

The editorial also mentioned other ways of reaching out to students for
comment. I'm curious to know what that entails.

Another thing that irks me are the virtue signalers on Twitter, many of whom are
journalists, siding with the Daily Northwestern's editorial, saying things like, "They're doing
their best" or "They're still learning."

Fuck off.

Apologizing for doing journalism crosses the line. If the staff acts like this,
will they bend to the whim of anyone who doesn't want to appear in a
"potentially negative" story? There would be no room for accountability. These
students are in a world of hurt if they want to work in this business and hope
to make a change.

I hope you're joking. Northwestern won't close the school. That would be absurd.

 

I was just upset, but I think the profs should be ashamed. ... The editorial said the reporters would be schooled on how to reach sources, not get names out of the directory and calling people. That's absurd behavior by the editors. To be a journalist, you bother people a lot. It's up to them whether or not they want to be quoted, but it's your job to get out of your comfort zone and call/approach strangers.
Finally ... I would think the people who signed the editorial would have a hard time getting a job in Journalism. Then again ... I thought about it more and in this day and age of editorial slants in news stories, anything's possible. Their stance might be applauded by new age fake news media.

 

Wait a second . Don't you dare insinuate I'm racist. I had no idea of the color of this student's skin in reading all of this and didn't know it until he pointed it out. I didn't care then what his race is nor do I care now. That's not the point at all about this mess, which he is deflecting by explaining his race.

He's the one that seems to care that his race matters and thinks it should be made a point of. Not me and don't you fucking accuse me of that. His immediate use of race is clearly his own excuse and he's using it as a tool to gain sympathy.

In the meantime, fuck you.