Having been away for a week, I missed the latest in the UW Daily‘s apparent lurch toward the right.
But now I’m looking for people—and preferably people on the inside or near it—who can explain what’s going on. If you fit that description, please shoot me an email.
And if you’re not an insider but have a grand (or simple) theory about how the student newspaper of a liberal university, in a liberal city, got into the state it’s now in, please share it in the comments. I’m all ears.
An editor wants “balance” or is just right wing him/herself.
Pick up today’s issue – there are literally 7+ pages of people ripping John Fay a new one for his loathsome pro Prop 8 op-ed that ran last week.
I was just near the campus and flipped through their Thanksgiving mini-issue. Their editorial page was full of “things we’re not thankful for” and a girl who was replacing her normal turkey with a Spam feast. I’d be more concerned about that boring tripe than any right-wing attention-whore tactics.
After reading the daily for 2 years and sifting through the endless articles about every boring facet of Greek life it seems to be stocked with frat boys and sorority girls. They ran a full page story last year about how important it is as a frat brother to wear your frats’ t shirt to support your frat.
@1: yes. I attended the UW from 2000 to 2005 and periodically read The Daily between classes. During those years, and I have no reason to suspect it’s changed, there was an almost unhealthy obsession / conflation with “balance” at the expense of objectivity. As if an opinion deserves to be expressed for no other reason than because some students hold it.
@2 for the win. And the fact that so many people joined the Facebook group for a Hate Free Daily and then invited Mark Emmert and other UW Daily people to it probably had nothing to do with their attention to the issue.
But having a right-wing gay-hating Daily really sucks for the vast majority of the students …
Are letters to the editor posted online?
This city and state really aren’t that blue. Outside the city proper, and hell even INSIDE this city, there are plenty of republicans, pseudo-libertarians and the like. UW may have lots of liberal people, but you can’t deny that many of the business majors there are republican, either because of their parents money, or by the fact they were in young life(tm) during high school.
My sister is the faculty advisor of a college paper, and she generally lets the students run articles with differing views and opinions (as decided by the editor, obviously) and she has had to deal with never-ending amounts of bullshit from people who disagree with the content (as I am sure the Stranger does as well). I can understand that what was printed was beyond hateful and uninformed, but to be honest many right wing people believe that stuff, even if it seems ridiculous. That dude brought up every stupid ass idea the right has come up with to refute gay marrige, and now there are massive counter-points being offered here, on the UW blog, and letters to the editor of the paper. The guy is obviously a hateful homophobe, but the dude is also in college, where hopefully he will come out or at the very least meet some nice gay people who can change his mind about the marriage and civil rights issues at hand.
@7: not that I can find. Hopefully someone will scan them in– they cae from all levels of the student body, alumni, people with actual M.D.s and Ph.D.s, people with actual law learnin’, and they all universally called Fay out on his BS. It mamde my morning.
I have a simple theory –
No intelligent lefty person should care that much about writing for a 2-bit college rag anymore. In the pre-web and early-web days there was still some value. Writing/editing for a college newspaper probably seemed both fun and enriching to one’s resume.
In these days of the “Blog”, it is much easier and resume-enhancing to contribute to or start your own blog, or to write for some other on-line outlet. Even a few-lefty fun makers deciding NOT to join the (cough) illustrious Daily crew breaks the cycle.
Any UW student, past or present, will tell you that there has ALWAYS been an right wing paper distributed on campus (published by who knows) that supposedly balanced the lefty views of the Daily. I forget the name of the rag from my time. The fact that these views now just migrate over to the Daily is natural since a vacuum is created by no one else showing up to write other than mini-me versions of George W. Bush
I wish some students at the UW would start up an alternate daily or weekly paper. When I went to the Evergreen State College 20 years ago, there were people who thought the Cooper Point Journal wasn’t left enough so started a “Free Press.”
I worked at the Daily from 1993-1996. It was perfect then and any time before or since is absolute crap. It also went downhill when Oren Campbell retired. He was the best.
Aside from faculty and grad students, the UW really isn’t that liberal, at least the majority of the undergraduate students I have encountered aren’t. They often hail from rural parts of the state or the ‘burbs and exurbs, seem to range from clean cut and politically apathetic to very active young republicans and conservative christians. Outspoken liberal students in my classes always catch my attention because of their rarity, and I teach in a leaning-liberal field. I can’t imagine what the business classes are like.
I worked at The Daily between April 2000 and May 2002, and I can tell you a funny thing about it: If you spend long enough in the Daily newsroom, you’ll get to witness both the sight of an irate left-wing moonbat charging in and demanding to speak with “the editor” about the “fascist filth” published in that morning’s Opinion section, and then, another day, the sight of an irate right-wing wingnut charging in and demanding to speak with “the editor” about the “communist crap” published in that morning’s Opinion section.
The Daily and the UW have always been both left-wing and right-wing. Like any organization, The Daily’s quality, or lack thereof, depends on who shows up in the Ed-Chief’s office asking to write for the paper.
Best Daily Ed-Chief ever? I nominate Kristin Henderson. From October 2001 to March 2002, that was when The Daily was a mighty, mighty paper. And the Allen Library has the microfilm to prove it.
I can remember picking up the UW Daily years ago and thinking it must be an outlet of the College Republicans. Seemed pretty consistent whenever I checked back, but maybe I missed the years when they swung left.
I think there’s a couple of things going on. One — and this is mere speculation — but from my writing for The Daily days, I’m pretty sure the current editor-in-chief is a Christianist; I remember seeing a bunch of weird Jesus shit all over her computer. Granted this doesn’t necessarily mean she’s a conservative of the Hanity-Limbaugh cloth, but then again, she’s also from Wenatchee. The Daily has it’s own weird insider social scene. it’s not to implausible to believe that the newspaper is populated with like-minded folks. i knew a few of them; only one impressed me as smart.
The J-school curriculum emphasizes journalistic skepticism, and in an area that is predominantly liberal, a lot of them may gravitate to the center or right, seeing that shift as skeptical of the status quo.
As one of the other commenters wrote, eh?, what’s this print stuff anyway?
Most ambitious students write for the Daily to get their feet wet, and then move on to internships at the local dailies or The Stranger. Who wants to write for The Daily when the UW offers programs that could place them covering the state capitol for the Times or the P-I… or spending a summer in Beijing writing for China News Daily?
I’m sitting here in my senior year at the UW, and I think the reason the Daily has swung so far right recently is perceived oppression.
In most of the outlets for student expression you get the far left or the middle left taking the stage and driving away anyone who even thinks about moving to the center, God forbid the right. Student Government, on all levels, is dominated by very liberal students, student clubs (by and large) are dominated by liberal students… there just aren’t that many places you can hear conservative views from students on campus.
When all the loud voices are liberal, it creates the perception among the centrists to righties that they are against a vast majority that hates them and everything they stand for. The Daily struggles for relevance and often tries for it by presenting that minority opinion.
That said, lately they’ve picked more and more conservative Editors. I spoke with someone who was part of the selection process this last round, and his only reason to support this year’s Editor in Chief was “she was the most qualified.” Talk about damning her with faint praise.
@11: I will start a paper called “Fuck the Daily” and distribute it daily. And it will have one story in it, daily, called “Fuck the Daily.” UW is filled with the kind of clowns that run the Daily. I have to suffer them daily. Fuck the Daily.
And another thing.
Everybody who’s ever written anything for anyone anywhere thinks being condemned from both the left and the right proves they are doing their job well. It doesn’t. It doesn’t even prove you are in the center. If you really want to defend your writing, talk about your writing, not about your readers.
It just hasn’t been the same since the College Republicans let their alternative paper, Right Turn, go belly up.
I’m fairly certain that there was an alt-weekly funded by ASUW’s Service and Activities Fee Committee called Ruckus, but it seems to have gone defunct a few years ago.
My guess about the latest string of editorials is that like many other newspapers, the Daily is hungry for attention and pageviews.
It’s been right wing for years. What I suspect has happened is that the lefties have abandoned it, using blogs and Facebook instead, leaving a vacuum. The right wingers have moved in, and found themselves a comfy home in a newspaper no one reads.
@21 Ruckus was founded when I was like a junior, back in ’99. The problem was the group that ran it, known as “The Ruckus Collective.” Everyone was empowered, and therefore, nothing got done.
Oh lordy. Ruckus ate the first 2 years of my life at the UW. I look back on writing for it half fondly and half kicking myself for not doing a bunch of other stuff instead that would have been more useful in the long run.
I can’t believe people are thinking and writing about the Daily.
In the scheme of things — it doesn’t matter.
#13 Most of the staff I met, including me, were pretty liberal. I bet, staff wise, >90% of the chemistry department voted for Obama.
@26 Yes, yes, I agree. I’m talking about the undergraduate student body here, not staff and faculty.
Also, just because someone voted for Obama, doesn’t mean they are pro-gay marriage.
Because sorority girls major in communications, so there’s a tendency for Daily staff/culture to be more on the “traditional”/conservative side.
Also, we’re talking about students as young as 18 who are new to the city and come from other parts of the state and country where people are still afraid and narrow minded.
I, too, once wrote for the almighty Ruckus. Their old office remains in the HUB, currently occupied by SLAP, Amnesty International, and a bunch of other lefty UW activist groups. All the infrastructure is still on campus for Ruckus to be resurrected, in name and/or spirit.
HINT. HINT. HINT.
The Daily changes with every new team of editors and writers. It was a different when I started there as a freshman than when I left as a senior, and it’ll be different in two years than it is today. Every Daily alum I know reminisces about the days when it used to be great, generally referring to the period they personally started working there. If it’s become conservative, a few leaders push those views. It’ll change again.
Certainly The Daily lost something significant when its long-time publisher left. I’m also certain the decline of print journalism everywhere means fewer intelligent and/or hardworking people are willing to spend 50 hours/week in a newsroom. Unfortunate.
But there was always a push to print a balanced paper (ie, a comparable number of silly left-wing and silly right-wing pieces), and to print ideas to cause conversation (we write because we want people to read out words and remember them).
Maybe the Daily’s pursuing these aims less successfully now (though I bet I’m not the only one who remembers one particularly racist column we printed in 2002ish).
In any case, I’m pretty sure the daily was best when I was there. The design *definitely* was. 🙂
Just to clarify: Ruckus was founded in Fall 1997, mostly by a group of Daily writers who were fed up with the latter’s refusal (at the time) to cover student activism on campus. Our last issue (I joined in Fall ’99) came out in Summer 2005. Our last cover was a spoof of The Stranger, funnily enough, with a cut-out Karl Rove mask as the artwork. Anybody here remember that? There’s still (I hope) a bunch of copies of it in the old Ruckus office, if any of you ever want one.
As a UW alum, I seem to remember something of those days… Oh, yeah, that’s right. No one reads the Daily.
The Daily has always and its share of dumb conservative writers. Case in point: Russ Wung. Seriously, check out some of that guy’s articles.
Almost no one reads The Daily on any sort of regular basis. For most students, it is just a sudoku distribution machine.
@Raven – oh yeah, I worked for the Daily then, too, and I remember that column. Although wasn’t he sort of drummed out after that?
I thought this was an opinion piece, what happened to free speech? I guess that UW does not encourage thinking and expression but spoon feeding and oppression.
Gay people and their supporters can say the vilest things about religious people, they can disown their own history and discredit our culture yet if anyone disagrees with them, they descend like NAZI’S! Maybe anyone who believes that marriage is defined by one woman and one man should be put into re-education camps? Think of how many jobs B.O. could create. That is what Hitler did; do you think he was secretly gay? They did wear a lot of leather and were snappy dressers.
@ raven–I agree, design was definitely spectacular. As was the copy editing 😉
Echoing those who speak from experience, as a couple have pointed out, Daily staffers are a bunch of kids who work 50+ hours to brainstorm, research, write, lay out, edit, photograph, sell advertising for, staff and manage an impressively large (for a college publication) newspaper five days a week. And that’s not even counting the online presence OR that this is all on top of being fulltime students.
Some of those staffers are journalism majors, but many aren’t. I highlight that because it’s important to take this into consideration: For those who are not in the journalism degree program, the personal AND professional training that is necessary to get these would-be journos up to speed LIES SOLEY WITH THE OTHER STAFF MEMBERS OF THE DAILY. In recent years there has been an editor position created for someone who can help new writers get up to speed, but that is an ENORMOUS burden to place on one individual, much less a staff that’s already heavily taxed trying to get the paper out the door every night.
With respect to the issue at hand, though, there are a couple key breakdowns I see in what happened:
1) Although in the print version of the paper the pro-Prop 8 column was clearly packaged as part of a point-counterpoint (with an accompanying anti-Prop 8 column), when posted online it wasn’t as clear that the two were a set. The Daily’s run many, many point-counterpoints over the years that are structured a little differently from normal columns so this is a standard design concept that in THEORY shouldn’t have been an issue. However, in translation from print to online, that link wasn’t as clear, so if a reader was simply skimming headlines, they might think the column was representation of the staff’s opinions on the topic (eesh).
2) As far as the single column–or any column for that matter–as proof of The Daily’s lurch to the right or left, opinion columns should be taken as indication of ONLY THAT WRITER’S perspective. Inclusion of a column in an issue is not endorsing the author’s viewpoint any more than buying Gatorade means Michael Jordan is your favorite athlete. It’s more that the Opinion editor had two (or more) pages of space that needed to be filled that day and those columns were turned in by the necessary deadline–kind of like just being thirsty after a workout. The STAFF EDITORIAL is the intended representation of the entire newspaper staff’s stance on a subject, and should be the only thing definitively counted as such.
3) The paper attempted to cover the audience reaction by printing an enormous amount of letters to the editor following publication of the offending column. Unfortunately the staff missed the opportunity to explain the circumstances that led to the column being included and therefore inform their readers more about the thought process that goes into producing a paper. That would’ve been great to hear their side of the story, but I can’t really say I blame them. It happened right before finals week during maximum burnout time, and the reaction staffers regularly have to face from the rest of the campus/Seattle community doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that any explanation would be worth their time. (Yeah, it’s REAL fun to be told by random strangers your sleepless nights were wasted because all anyone cares about is damn SUDOKU.)
So to summarize: Haters–start up your own paper, join The Daily’s staff and make it better, or simply shut up. Ranters and Ravers–now that the election is over, do you really have nothing better to squabble about? I say cut the kids some slack and get over it–STUDENT journalists implies they’re still learning.
One person’s “Daily” os thousands of people’s litter. I don’t remember the last time I read The Daily when I wasn’t sitting on the john.
I would just like to point out that the focus of Mr. Fay’s article had little to do with Proposition 8, and more to do with bashing gay people. Including ALL sides of an issue in a University newspaper is important in order to further educate its readers. However, homophobia such as this should not be tolerated.
*Homophobia in Mr. Fay’s article.