Retrospection

Last Days at The Post

Above, from top: A hall of old Posts welcomes visitors; The edition announcing the school closing after the Kent State riots hangs with other famous Posts through the years; Current Posts hang with critiques in the lounge. Below right: A precious plant pretty much owns the window in the lounge.

Peace out, sewer
The walls are bare and the ancient computers are left on as if they are ready to be used. But there will never again be a paper produced in this old room, featuring a garbage bag over the window to keep the plants from poking through.

The first time I ever walked in the Post newsroom, I was excited by a bunch of seminormal-seeming kids fired up about journalism. Two and a half years later, the metaphorical luster has not worn off, but the paint sure has. Maybe the bathroom has become unusable and the stains on the carpet look worse and worse, but it’s still home. We’re like the ninja turtles of journalism, hanging out in our sewer.

Nastalgia aside, this quarter has been an interesting start of a year at The Post. It has been a quarter of transition as well as controversy.

A facelift
At the beginning of the year, The Post unveiled a redesign, which some have criticized as looking too soft/youthful/feature-y, but most have recognized with applause. A revamp of the cramped, graphic-deprived old design was overdue. And we assure you that the news coverage is not soft. Our next step, thanks to Editor Brittany Kress’ happy obsession with making things look pretty, will be the Web site, which should be ready to unveil at the beginning of Winter Quarter. The new design will be more reflective of the new print version and will eventually include blogs, a calendar and a Craig’s List-type database. I hope that future Posties will put more and more resources onto the Web.

Brittany's round-up of the quarter: “We redesigned the paper this quarter, and we are going to redesign and enhance the Web site, and we are moving to a new building. This could be one of the biggest years of changes The Post, I think, has ever seen. I think everyone’s adjusting really well, and they’re really excited.”

Above left: Editor Brittany Kress screws in a light bulb in the editorial office. Above right: Amy Lauer, design editor, puts together a story package.

Plenty of stories to go around
We kicked off the year with a business school blowout (Reports, prof find faults in business college). Sean Gaffney has had his hands tied following up on the plagiarism scandal that put Ohio University in the recent national spotlight (most recent story: OU mines theses and dissertations for plagiarism), including coverage on Jay Leno and Nightline, both of which I unfortunately don’t have archival links for.

At the start of October, the alcohol policy for athletes debacle ruined our lives, as our sports editor would say. It definitely came at a time when both sports and campus staffs were already overloaded (our first story: Damage control).

The New York Times (Ohio University Tries to Get Past Problems, But New Ones Emerge) did a story on the problems facing Ohio University. These problems are not going away anytime soon.

The price of news
Wednesday night after our last meeting of the quarter, a few of us were talking over drinks at Casa about the burden of some of the stories we presented this year. (Yes, it’s true, we still talk about The Post even when we aren’t there.) Copy Chief Jeff Smith is doing a project about the harm and good of publications running controversy for a journalism class. An excerpt of a few thoughts he shared in a memo to all of us a few weeks ago, which he gave me permission to use:

"I was just reading Brittany and Janet's College of Business story online and thinking about all the controversy here in the past year. Obviously there's something wrong with your school when your dirty laundry ends up in a Jay Leno monologue, but as these scandals pop up, I keep wondering how prevalent these problems are elsewhere. (We can't be unique, and I wonder if we're even all that special.)

"… This is going to sound arrogant, but I wonder if OU's reputation is what it is today only because the student journalists at OU are better than the ones covering the rest of the MAC and our peer institutions. Of course, we didn't create the problems. But we've been good at exposing/covering them, haven't we? I'm not suggesting we stop focusing on OU's dirty laundry so as to dig it up at other schools, nor am I trying to defend cocaine possession and player arrests. But there's nothing special about having dirt under your bed; it just takes a flashlight to see it."

Jeff interviewed several administrators/OU newsmakers, who shared their fair observations and also aired their grievances about our coverage. I cannot use their comments here, but here is my commentary, which I also sent to the other editors:

"It's almost painful to work at a student newspaper that digs up stories that unveil scandal defacing our school's image. But I think the reporters do a fair job of reporting about them. And it's our responsibility as journalists to get controversies out there in the most efficient way possible. I don't think we pick on the university, in fact, I think there are a billion stories out there that we could be reporting on and don't have the resources for. I do think that because we have a good journalism program, Ohio University is on closer watch by a student media outlet than other schools. However, other big Ohio schools are on closer watch by metropolitan newspapers (i.e. The Dispatch over OSU or The Enquirer over Miami), and so I think it balances out.

"As far as our reporting, I do think a lot of our news stories are not Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism. Some of the reporters are newcomers and some of the stories are mediocre. BUT they are always as fair as possible. Even if we roll our eyes at a quote a new reporter brings in, the editors help make it the best it can be. I can proudly say that I can’t think of a story this year that felt like it didn’t have both sides of the story, even if the story wasn’t totally sexy in reporting or presentation … Sometimes we have to run with the damn thing in the best interest of the public.

"To give you an example from my perspective at The Post, Friday Features make me want to kill myself every week. It is SO HARD to get journalism students to write sweet news features that take weeks of reporting, especially when the day-to-day grind is so consuming. And of course, in a New York Times world, every story would be a Friday Feature, and it’s just not possible. With that said, some of our stories are out-of-the-ballpark, especially in the thoroughness of reporting. Brittany and Janet’s business story went far beneath the surface of he-said-she-said (or he-said-he-said in this case). It takes a lot of time to be more than a mouthpiece, and Post reporters — babies and old fogies — have proven time and time again that they will take that extra time."

A 'very unique' crowd
Despite the outer whir of scandal lapping up around us, we were met with a few internal problems this quarter, including understaffing. But the thrill of the new building, away from the disgusting bathroom pictured in my earlier post, has excited us all, despite the overworked, underpaid lifestyle we often flaunt.

Amid the stressful nights (I win the award for most trips to The Messenger at 6:30 a.m., thank you very much), trips to Wendy’s and scandal that news outlets all over the country caught sight of, we’ve had quite a few laughs. In fact, we have a whole quote book full of things that at least we think are funny. We sometimes get a kick out of misused commas, or using the redundant phrase “very unique.”

Left: Posties DIY: A Miller Light candle and a retro phone we can't wait to replace. Below right: The Guide to Getting It On was one of the more exciting press packages we received all quarter.

Other highlights this quarter were the arrival of new sex manuals in our press materials: The Guide to Getting It On and Cosmo’s Aqua Kama Sutra. Associate Editor Justin Thompson, who doubles as a book critic for culture staff, reviewed the former (Guidebook answers sexual questions). The Kama Sutra review ended up being too dirty for press, even after heavy editing. And then the book disappeared from the newsroom.

From a staff editor
“My favorite thing about The Post is the friendly atmosphere in the newsroom. I'm sure it isn't like this in the real world, so I'm soaking it in while I still have the chance. All of the top editors and staff editors interact so well and it allows us to have fun while still doing our jobs. In most professional newsrooms, I'm sure there are a lot of ill feelings or hostile relationships, but we all seem to get along well and have fun joking as we work away our lives. It's the little things that make our endless hours working at The Post seem worthwhile.” — Caitlin Price, culture editor (pictured above right)

Above left: Brittany gives directions to copy editors, who are hard at work for the last latenight of the quarter, as Copy Chief Jeff Smith prepares to hand out a page proof. Above right: Myself and copy editors Carly McCloskey and Sarah McCoy pretend to work on a headline together so that we can all pose for this blog picture for our Online Journalism class.

Feedback
Please let me know your thoughts:

• How do you feel about The Post’s coverage of controversy? How could it improve?
• Do you think the editorial decisions on controversial matters have been fair?
• Do you think we should review more sex books?