The Daily Barometer: WTF?

I'm seriously starting to wonder what's going on over there.

First the Barometer has to subcontract the story about Saturday's protest at Reser to a professional reporter - what's that all about?

Second, I just read this thing which I think is supposed to be an editorial... but I'm confused. Even editorials are supposed to be checked before they are published, and this is so incoherent and self-serving I am having trouble believing no one raised any objections as it went through the editing process.

Either that or the Barometer is taking too many clues from Tim Russert.

In any case, it's not pretty:

The Barometer, though it works to facilitate discussion on campus, is not a public forum. The Barometer remains independent of the university and is able to deny publication of any material submitted.

This is the opening line of the editorial. Not only is it wrong*, but starting out with this is a big 'fuck you' to just about everyone: "We'll provide lip service towards serving the community, but you can't make us do anything. Neener neener neener!"

[*While the Barometer does not take student fee dollars, it does receive plenty of financial compensation from the university in the form of free rent and utilities and the salaries of at least three professional faculty members, including Frank Ragulsky, the Director of Student Media and the primary Barometer staff adviser.]

Next, the editorial mischaracterizes the debate:

There are two sides of this debate. There are community members who have been offended by the Barometer's coverage of the "Blackout Reser" event and there are community members who are offended that their school spirit has been called into question.

I have an aversion to claiming there are two sides to an issue. There are almost always more, and I really don't like seeing the Barometer reinforce the she said/he said model of journalism, where every conflict is placed into a neat, preexisting narrative that never has more than two sides and is almost always unrealistic.

But more importantly, I'm not sure anyone is calling anyone's 'school spirit' into question. More like we are calling into question folks' refusal to listen to and learn from people of color, or to take seriously any claim that might require either introspection or a change in behavior.

Furthermore, I'm not sure "coverage" is the right word - it's more like the lack thereof combined with a set of responses from the editorial staff that seem transparently self-serving.

Material submitted by those not affiliated with the Barometer must be less than 300 words, submitted as a letter to the editor and deemed fit for publication.

Uh, unless this is a previously unannounced change in policy, the Barometer has previously run op-eds that are well over 300 words in length by students, staff and faculty alike. Either this is new or a lie - and I'd like to know which.

Some consistency here would be nice - I have long had the sense that the Barometer wants to have their cake and eat it too by claiming independence from the university community while still claiming to be the source of campus news. Frankly, it's not possible to do both - either the Barometer is a member of the campus community, meaning that it genuinely responds to community concerns, or it's not**, in which case it should stop claiming such status.

We are doing our best to continue the discussion respectfully.

Because opening an online forum in which all comments are a priori approved is the height of taking responsibility for creating a respectful space. From what I've seen, there's no communication going on there whatsoever, just extended rants that don't address each other. I believe it would be possible to create a moderated forum in which respectful, constructive discussion could take place. The Barometer has not done that.

If you, as a member of the community that we cover, feel offended or hurt by any material in The Daily Barometer, we urge you to first contact us.

We cannot represent students unless they first represent themselves to us. As of yet, we have not been asked to respond.

I don't want to discount the possibility that this will work, but I am highly skeptical. Perhaps it's because every time something like this happens, the Barometer asks people to come to the mountain, rather than actually reach out and make an effort to listen - and when people do attempt to reach the Barometer staff, they find it closed off, cliquish and unwilling to really listen (I am speaking from both personal and second-hand experience). It smacks of a sense of privilege about their place in the community, privilege that I think is increasingly assumed and not earned.

And of course there is the obligatory plug, the one that accentuates just how much the Barometer wants to be independent of any responsibility to the community and yet have the community rely on them:

As students, as student editors and those who continue to strive toward the goals of being a well-read, relevant publication, we hope that you would come to us first.

**If the Barometer is not a member of the campus community, if it is not the campus paper, then it should be truly independent of the university, which means it needs to handle its own accounting (which is currently done someone who is paid at least partly by student fee money), it needs to pay rent for use of the on-campus space, it needs to pay its own utilities, and it needs to pay the salaries of its advisers if it wants to keep them. The Daily Emerald down at the University of Oregon does all those things and is, therefore, truly independent of the university. The Barometer is not, and should not be allowed to claim that status.

I've been waiting for years for that conversation to happen.

***Final note: Another way to look at this is that the staff really has no idea of how the public views the paper. If I were the newspaper, I would start a campaign to educate the campus community on the basics of journalism. It might serve to soften the response because all too often, it seems like the staff is doing what they think is right based on journalism standards - standards the larger community is unaware of.