Slog tipper Charles writes:

I’m a student at the UW and I thought you might want to see these piece-of-shit endorsements for Dino Rossi and against I-1000 made by our piece-of-shit student newspaper, The Daily. Normally this would be irrelevant, but the Daily has a potential (idiot) readership of 20,000 and the gubernatorial race is close enough that something like this could actually tip it one way or another.

The Daily‘s reasoning on Rossi:

In tough economic times, we need a candidate who can balance the budget and Dino is our guy. He’s smart, he’s savvy and he had the know-how to help Gary Locke get out of economic anguish in 2003.

For four years under Christine Gregoire, the budget was balanced. But the viaduct has remained in its status quo and the Sonics are gone.

And on I-1000:

Instead of focusing on ending life prematurely, the focus should be on providing care that increases the quality of life during those last months.

I’m guessing there are more than a few dissenting UW students and alumni in the Slog mob, so I’ll save you all the trouble of digging this up yourself: here’s the email address for Daily editor Sarah Jeglum.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

68 replies on “UW Daily Endorses… Rossi?”

  1. But the viaduct has remained in its status quo and the Sonics are gone.

    I think that last line will make most UW students go “bwaahahaahaha”, I hope.

    But I do encourage feedback to the editor.

  2. “Yes, Gregoire should have allowed Bennett to skullfuck the city, county, and state, so uh like vote for Rossi, who was a willing taker of Bennett, if you know what i mean.”

  7. I wrote for the Daily a bit back in the mid-’90s, and this may be nostalgia talking, but I’m pretty sure it was a great deal better back then. The issues I pick up these days are TERRIBLE. Worse than a high school paper. I fear the internet and tabloid journalism may have done a number on our young journalists.

    Hopefully a good number of the UW’s undergrad population will take these recommendations with a HUGE grain of salt given the current state of the Daily in general.

  8. Don’t worry. No one actually reads the Daily. It’s just a masturbatory journalistic exercise for students who wish to become reporters.

  9. I just remember getting mad at them for never running the concerts the UW put on in the calendar. And never even attempting to promote them, no matter how many times I told them that they could contact me and probably get interviews with the band, or at least get something to write about. They could preview concerts going on in other places, but for some reason, never the ones in the next building over.

    Ahem. Anyway.

  10. Maybe if Gregiore was better at her job this wouldn’t have happened? Just sayin’.

    I mean Obama is going to take the state by double digits, Kerry took Washington in a landslide, we have two Democratic Senators and she is ahead of Rossi by two fucking points? The problem isn’t the Daily, the problem is Gregiore!!

  11. God, The Daily is such a sad sack of a newspaper. Every day as a grad student I have to walk by these stacks of it, and teach in the same building as its quite nice, dedicated offices, and wonder simply, “What the fuck?” My undergrad university had half the student body and two papers better than the Daily.

    But it’s in no small part a function of attempting to produce daily college newspapers. There’s just fuck all to write about, and so they have to set the bar quite low (and it’s not like these kids are qualified to write on much of anything, anyway).

  13. Despite all this talk about “Generation We”, college students are still gullible when it comes to former used car salesmen and ISO tablers.

  14. The Daily is notoriously bad. I know plenty of people who wanted to major in journalism at UW but hated the Daily so much they went to WSU. Earlier this year they published a story on the front page about an event on campus without mentioning where, when, how much, or who to contact for information. Not a single person caught that– WTF?

    When I do bother with the Daily at the bus stop, it’s generally filled with sports and conservative ramblings. In a city filled with tons of music and art, I never see either covered. Daily FAIL.

  18. It will be somewhat entertaining (in a Schaudenfraude-silver-lining kinda way) if this sways enough students to vote for Rossi, and then he jacks up the little bastards’ tuition to the sky.

  20. Ugh… The people currently in the Daily that are responsible for the writing of content and represent the majority of editorial opinion have become an insular little group of undergrads that have even run out other people–even grad students with actual professional experience.

    Dealing with them can also be a headache because they take their cues from television mainstream media sources, which many of them hope to someday aspire to. As the Daily is an entirely student run medium there isn’t much in the way of quality control unless those participating in the Daily want there to be.

    A lot of students do complain that it’s assey and we’ve just taken to telling them, “well then contribute/participate!” Of course the caveat to that is, form a mob and storm it then your contributions will see the light of day.

  21. Yeah, the Daily sucks horribly, but they’re making some changes this year… instead of having a new editorial staff every quarter, they’ve moved to an annual model now… that’s bound to help with consistency and the quality of editing.

    Though, I have to admit it bothers me that the “conservatives” they pull out of the woodwork to write rebuttals or the token conservative piece tend to be nut jobs or, to borrow a phrase, credulous hacks. After reading some of the worst examples, I’ve frequently tried to give up reading the whole paper… but I keep going back. Mostly because they do still occasionally talk about things I’m involved in… if we beg them, spoon feed them the information they need to write the article, and then call to make sure they wrote the damn thing.

  22. #7: I know what you mean. I was at the Daily from ’90-’93, and it was an exciting place to be at that time. Lots of good people, and some surprisingly great writing. Sorry to see it’s declined so far…

  24. As a current grad student at UW and a former grad of WSU, I was hoping against hope that at least the editorial board at the Daily Evergreen (WSU’s student rag) had the good sense to endorse Chris. Sadly, it isn’t so.

    http://www.dailyevergreen.com/story/26756

    Where the fuck are Washingtonian collegians to go for an insightful look at state politics? Do any of the dailies at higher ed institutions (Central’s Observer, the Western Front, the Jibsheet the Spectator, the Whitworthian, etc.) endorse Gregoire?

  25. Seems to me that many college papers have moved in a conservative direction in the last decade or so. The usual stereotype-leftie student just isn’t drawn to journalism as a career (or, in this media landscape, doesn’t see the benefit of a journalism degree in pursuing that career anyway).

  26. This would appear counter to the message of that video posted yesterday that generations have anything what-so-ever to do with making change in this world. (unless the UW Daily editors are all those evil baby boomers)

  29. Maybe “Luke The Truth” Esser has returned to The Daily:
    http://blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics/2008/09/18/ethics_board_dismisses_gop_chair_luke_th

    Nice to see someone finally is admitting that the Sonics’ fiasco is influencing the race. Not that the Sonics matter to me but a number of people I know are voting for Rossi simply because of the Sonics which is sad since Rossi is sooo bad. Even The Stranger is ignoring the Sonics influence on the race. Whether you care about the Sonics or not it still is having a bigger influence on the race than most people on here care to admit.

  30. When I was but a kid in high school (late 80’s / early 90’s) I would take extension courses at UW and hang out there a lot coz college guys are what they are. Back then I thought the Stranger was the UW student newspaper.

  31. “Huh. The Daily’s site is “currently undergoing maintenance.”
    RETRACT RETRACT RETRACT boooop booooop booooop!”

    We used to restrict comments to Facebook users only to prevent spam, but because of this article I took the site down for a few minutes to remove that restriction. Maybe if there’s enough feedback, they’ll issue a retraction.

    Have at it, folks.

  32. “Huh. The Daily’s site is “currently undergoing maintenance.”
    RETRACT RETRACT RETRACT boooop booooop booooop!”

    We used to restrict comments to Facebook users only to prevent spam, but because of this article I took the site down for a few minutes to remove that restriction. Maybe if there’s enough feedback, they’ll issue a retraction.

    Have at it, folks.

  34. My biggest problem is that they’ve put our budget and the Sonics above both health care and education, they need to get their priorities strait.

  36. The last time I picked up The Daily, there was a huge article on ‘how to dress for success’ and it promised to be first in a series of ‘style reports.’ It really has gone the way of tabloid TV for teenage minds.

  39. As a former employee and editor of WSU’s The Daily Evergreen, I can say that we snickered a lot about the crap printed in UW’s Daily. As @14 pointed out, people who know anything about good com schools realize that WSU has one of the finest programs of any public university in the nation … but UW can’t really make that claim.

    That said: Student papers, even the best student papers, are not The New York Times. They’re testing grounds. Experimental labs, where you see what works and what doesn’t. A big part of student journalism is finding your voice and learning how to affect the reader on a personal level. This is especially true in the opinion pages of student papers, where many writers will adopt a contrary position for the specific purpose of getting the readers riled up. Angry letters to the editor are often viewed as better than no letters at all — using the logic that if people are mad enough to write, at least they’re reading the paper.

    Editorials in student newspapers — any student newspaper, including the Harvard Crimson or the Daily Illini — carry very little weight in the real world. It’s doubtful the Daily’s Rossi endorsement would sway even undecided student voters, much less local residents who just need something to flip through at the bus stop.

  43. It just occurred to me that perhaps the Cougs and Huskies are having a journalistic year similar to the experiences of their football squadrons. Perhaps the Apple Cup should be substituted for a Daily/Daily Evergreen editorial board battle to the death.

  44. Pathetic. Did they even do any research? I know for a fact they didn’t talk to anybody on any of the campaigns.

    Thank god I already voted.

    Yes for Gregoire, and Yes on 1000.

  45. Why can’t people understand that Republicans don’t balance budgets they break them giving pork to special interests. Dino is not savvy he’s smarmy.

    re: I 1000-Since Republicans always slash social programs where will funding for better end-of-life care be found?

  47. @46: Yeah, I was thinking that was probably the deal. Oren Campbell knew how to stay out of the way of the staff but still lead by example. He had, whadayacallit? Gravitas.

  48. The Daily, at least in its current form, is an embarrassment to the University. I’ve read it on and off for three years and can say with a high level of certainty that my high school paper was leaps and bounds better.

  49. @42:”‘You have to be on Facebook to post comments there, by the way.’
    Not for the endorsement article.”

    Actually, no articles require it anymore. We received too many complaints about that policy; it was nice for keeping out spam, but also prevented a lot of legitimate comments.

  50. When I first moved here in 1987, I lived in the U District, and would regularly see “The Daily”. I couldn’t believe how crappy it was: Mediocre reporting, tabloid formatting – just totally amateur.

    Coming from Iowa City, where “The Daily Iowan” competes with the Iowa City Press-Citizen (and usually wins in terms of quality), it was quite a surprise.

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