This was recently posted, in a longer ver­sion, on a list­serv. Any ideas:

This year, we have seen a pre­cip­i­tous decline in our accu­racy  stan­dards. Hardly a day goes by with­out a cor­rec­tion or three.

Part of it, I think, is that it’s never been eas­ier for read­ers and  sources to point out our mis­takes. I think other fac­tors include  edi­tors who are too busy mul­ti­task­ing to really think crit­i­cally  dur­ing the edit­ing process, writ­ers who are dis­en­gaged, sto­ries that come in too close to dead­line for good vet­ting and poten­tially, a process with so many fail-safes that no one takes own­er­ship. (more…)

If a stu­dent news­pa­per has restric­tions on adver­tis­ing tobacco or smok­ing prod­ucts, what do you do with a hookah bar? Is that the same thing or some­thing totally different?

I must admit, I’ve never entered a hookah bar. I don’t know what they’re all about. I just won­der how they fit into the equa­tion and what stu­dent news­pa­pers are doing about ads from places like hookah bars.

Does the need for increased ad rev­enue in tough eco­nomic times out­weigh the moral stan­dards the paper would like to uphold? Does the econ­omy make it nec­es­sary for stu­dent papers to review and maybe change old adver­tis­ing reg­u­la­tions to help increase rev­enue, regard­ing things like alco­hol and tobacco? Real­ity is these com­pa­nies are often get­ting rich off the money from stu­dents on your cam­pus; why not get some money from those wealthy companies?

What if you have a really strong News Edi­tor (or any other lead­er­ship posi­tion for that mat­ter) who is offered a posi­tion at a pro­fes­sional paper or a great intern­ship and lit­er­ally has to leave one day? Do you bite your tongue and cel­e­brate the suc­cess as a stu­dent news­pa­per? Do you crit­i­cize the per­son for not giv­ing more notice and bail­ing out on a year– or semester-long com­mit­ment? How does a stu­dent news­pa­per — small or large — deal with such changes? It is the nature of the beast to have a staff some­what in flux.

This arti­cle ran in today’s Grand Rapids Press. It was on Page B2 — in the Busi­ness sec­tion. Just a brief. We hear all about newspaper’s strug­gling as a busi­ness, but not much about things like this… (more…)

At some papers, writ­ers are stripped of bylines if their arti­cles do not meet the stan­dards of the pub­li­ca­tion. The result, no pay and no clip. This is the ulti­mate insult to a reporter, really. It surely would get someone’s atten­tion. (more…)