With great power comes great responsibility

So last week I had my first great big genuine journalistic fuck-up.

The story: the USF Faculty Association was holding "informational picketing" sessions last Monday and Wednesday to raise awareness about their ongoing contract negotiations with the administration.

I got in touch with the president of the USFFA and had a phone interview with him over the weekend. Then I figured I could get in touch with the rest of my sources on Monday as the picketing was going on.

The Foghorn does layout Monday night. I had Monday afternoon (my only free time after three classes) to gather the majority of my sources and write the entire 600+ word article. I quickly spoke to as many people as I could who were outside at the event, and then scrambled into the Foghorn office to get my words onto paper, fast.

The story was, I thought, a success. It was long. There were a lot of quotes. My grammar was superb and the story flowed quite nicely. A+ work, I thought.

Sometime around Tuesday, I got a nagging feeling in my stomach. There was something not right about my story. By Wednesday, it was quite clear: my story only presented one side of the issue. Only USFFA picketers and supportive students were quoted. There was no representation from the administration, nor any dissenting faculty or student voices. Oh. Shit.

Sure enough, Thursday morning, after the paper had been on the newsstands no more than 12 hours, Fr. Stephen Privett, USF president, sent the Foghorn an extremely angry e-mail. I'll quote for you some of Privett's more stinging insults:

• "The article is a classic case of 'Fox' journalism where one and only one perspective is passed it off as 'news.'"

• "How can anyone with a brain think that the University 'has run economic surpluses of $40 million a year for the last three years?'"

• "Had your reporter taken the time to at least review my convocation address, she might have had a clue about the University’s overall financial situation."

• "The Foghorn’s passing off such a one-sided, partisan discussion of a very complex situation as a 'new' article is inexcusable."

Etc. etc.

Ouch.

I definitely regret not spending more time gathering interviews to create a balanced article. It's true that the article was "biased." Not in the sense that I included my own opinions in the piece, but in the sense that I only interviewed people on one side of the issue. Was this based on my own feelings about the faculty contract negotiations? Hardly! It was simply a matter of a busy student journalist trying to do too much in too little time.

I realize now that when one has the great responsibility of covering a story that actually MATTERS to a lot of people, a reporter has to be extremely fair to each and every side -- and if I was too busy to cover the story responsibly, I should have held it for the next week's issue or asked for help from another reporter.

Though I think Fr. Privett's e-mail was a tad harsh, I definitely feel remorseful. Cheesy as it sounds, I learned a valuable lesson from this experience.

Please, read the story for yourself and tell me what you think. And this goes back to my last week's blog post: how do you go about defining bias? And is it always such a horrible thing? Anyway, things to ponder...

Going to D.C.!

So it is official: I am going to Washington D.C. on Sunday to participate in an mtvU program called Editorial Board. The premise of the show is for four college journalists to interview a political figure to get him or her to answer to the issues that are important to young people. There has only been one episode so far, in which the students interviewed Bill Clinton. You can watch it on the Editorial Board web site.


I am one of the lucky four who gets to interview Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for the show's second episode.

I fly out to D.C. on Sunday, rehearse Monday, and the interview takes place Tuesday. I fly back to San Francisco Tuesday night. Somewhere between all that I hope to see some of the sights our nation's capital has to offer -- I've never been! -- but I won't be heartbroken if that doesn't happen.

All in all, free trip to D.C., opportunity to meet one of my political heroines, invaluable journalistic experience -- not a bad deal.

New York, New York

Over Spring Break I was given the invaluable opportunity to attend a three-day journalism conference in New York City with three other editors of The Foghorn. We were in conferences from about 8 am to 3 pm, and then the afternoons and evenings were free for exploring. Needless to say, I had the time of my life.

The conferences were incredibly fascinating. It came to little surprise to me that many of the speakers emphasized the importance of new media for college newspapers, and newspapers in general.

Blogs. Podcasts. Videos. Comments. Sound familiar, digital journalism classmates?

I am really excited to start incorporating these story-telling technologies into the Foghorn's online platform, which is embarrassingly behind the times. Some of my co-editors seem hesitant to incorporate these changes, in part because they don't know how and in part because they don't know why it is important. Hopefully I can start changing that soon -- I know this conference definitely got me pumped to start taking some action.

I really enjoyed hearing from the professional journalists as well. A lot of them talked about how to get a job and what to expect when you do get one. It's funny how in all of my media studies classes, we rarely get any information about what an actual job in the media industry entails.

* * * * *

As much as I learned inside the conference rooms, I learned almost as much by exploring the great city of New York. What an experience.

First of all, the food! Oh goodness, I have never eaten so well (or so poorly, from a nutritional standpoint). In my few days in the city, I enjoyed a cheesy roast beef sandwich from Connolly's Pub, a thick slab of chocolate cake from Junior's, and delicious Latin American cuisine from Boca Chica.

And I may have indulged in more pizza than one should in a three-day span. Oops.

* * * * *

Our hotel was in Times Square (check out the view from on of the conference rooms!)


But, just as Union Square does not give one an authentic taste of San Francisco, I am sure Times Square does not give much of an accurate portrayal of NYC, so my fellow travelers and I tried to branch out as much as we could in our short stay.

We went to the Laugh Lounge comedy club in the Lower East Side to see some local comedians.

On St. Patty's Day we hit up some Irish Pubs (and I'm pretty sure we saw a real life leprechaun, or else just a very short, red-haired, and intoxicated Irish man).

We checked out Ground Zero. That was humbling.


From there we walked through the Wall Street area to Battery Park, where I got to see the Statue of Liberty.


And we took a super touristy double decker bus ride that actually ended up giving me a good grasp of the city.

I took loads of pictures, so to see the madness firsthand, check out my Flickr set.

* * * * *

Incidentally, I was in the city in the midst of some pretty major breaking news: the embarassing Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal and the tragic construction mishap that left seven dead. It was interesting to hear all the buzz amongst locals about these major incidents. And there is something really cool about reading the New York Times when you're actually in New York City, a block or so away from its headquarters.

f*** this s***

As an editor for a Catholic university-funded newspaper, there are certain things we must be careful about. We get a lot of freedom from the administration, don't get me wrong, but there are certain subject matters that we are forced to be extremely sensitive about... abortion, birth control, alcohol and illegal substance use, etc.

Okay, so no frivolous pieces on the virtues of abortion. Duh.. no responsible journalist would do that anyway.

But one thing that was news to me was that the university has declared war on "naughty words." Two weeks ago, in an interview with Curb Your Enthusiasm's Susie Essman, staff writer Jim Taugher asked Essman for her thoughts on a comment posted on a fan message board that said "I would like to f*** the s*** out of her."

Turns out, this question, which was part of a really interesting interview full of good questions and colorful insights, was viewed by the university as being vulgar and offensive. The Foghorn immediately received e-mails from a prominent university official asking for an explanation and an apology.

Left with few options, we ran an apology the following week, and met with said official to grovel and gain back some of her affection. Shameless, I know.

The point is... what is the point? Oh yeah.. Profanity. The words used in the article were profane, especially in that context -- but that was the point. Besides, they really were implemented tastefully, as Taugher was using the quote to get at an interesting point: how can a strong woman in Hollywood, who doesn't portray herself as a sex toy by any means, deal with that kind of objectification? All in all, a really decent, smart question.

Moreover, these words were used in a direct quote, and they were asterisked out, all which is in line with the AP Style Guide.

Then...

On February 14, Jane Fonda appeared on the Today Show to talk about her involvement with the play The Vagina Monologues, and, low and behold, she used the "C-word." And America freaked. And NBC apologized profusely for her "slip-up." And people worried about the poor children who were exposed to this dirty, vulgar, disgusting word over their Cheerios.

The thing is, like The Foghorn incident (am I really comparing The Foghorn with The Today Show? meh...), it really wasn't a slip-up. At least I don't think it was. The word was used in the context of a famous feminist play, so it was obviously not being disrespectful toward women. In fact, one of the whole points of Monologues is to "reclaim" the word cunt from being what the Parents Television Council called "one of the most patently offensive words in the English language."

Bad words... isn't this all very juvenile? The very idea of certain words being "bad" reminds me of junior high school. I thought the stigma associated with these words would disintegrate after eighth grade.

It's things like this that make me want to move to Canada.