Some of you will remember this wonderful post regarding my thoughts on the YellowJacket roughly a year ago. Well, a comment necromancer has seen fit to respond to my criticisms, and because of the length of my rebuttal, I will post it here and link it there. Comment is in italics and red, my responses are in blue:
That year was a turning point for the YellowJacket as is [sic] went from a polical/opinion- based paper to a student-based paper.
The YellowJacket is and always has been a student-run paper. I would assert that the paper didn't all of a sudden become more student-oriented under the leadership of the aforementioned editorial staff. Rather, it abandoned all pretenses of news outside of LeTourneau (and occasionally news within LeTourneau), instead giving itself over to specialty human interest stories such that the percentage of such things went up and the number of legitimate news articles dropped to virtually nonexistant.
Although the manangement was inexperienced, they were the only leadership the paper was able to acqire.
I will grant that the management was inexperienced and the only management to volunteer for the job at all, though this is largely due to the hiring of an editorial staff in the middle of the semester and a lack of publicity given to the hirings. That aside, this is not by way of excusing our inept former editors, for you didn't see me rushing out to teach LU's Biblical Greek classes when Dr. Farrell retired... I'm simply not qualified. If you know you lack qualifications for a position, you shouldn't apply to do it... and believe me when I tell you that aformentioned staff's attempts at papers sucked horribly. I can blame LeTourneau for not hiring better editors after the abysmal Spring 2003 semester and certainly after the Fall 2003 semester, and I can probably blame the editors for not finding more help or insisting on better quality, but that is neither here nor there. The fact remains that when you examine papers from this particular regime you will notice a pattern: the worst writing was that of the editorial staff. Further, the writings of formerly-competent staff members took on an eerily-mangled quality, almost as if the editors were editiing the quality out of the pieces rather than editing the mistakes out.
Those women did the best job that was possible with their background.
What does that statement even mean? Are you saying that they lacked training in creating a newspaper? I was at the organizational meetings for the beginning of their regime, and I know they had a variety of skilled former editors and faculty and staff advisors at their disposal, ready to be asked for help. Are you saying that they lacked requisite knowledge and ability in writing and editing stories and in managing writers? If so, why did they apply at all?
If they didn't try, then there probably wouldn't have been a paper at all.
False. LeTourneau relies upon the YellowJacket primarily as proof that there are student organizations such as a student newspaper and it simply wouldn't have been allowed to go defunct.
Because of their efforts, the YellowJacket is now a student-based paper and is not controlled by the opinion of the editors a few years back.
LeTourneau's student newspaper, such as it is, is more or less a Constituitional Monarchy where LeTourneau sets the ground rules and leaves the editorial staff their own little fief within which to rule. The YellowJacket has always been a puppet dancing in the hands of the editorial staff, and it probably always will. LU reserves the right to take the puppet and relocate it to another puppetteer, and some puppetteers allow more editorial freedom to their writers, but in the end, the paper is not a democracy.
Beyond all of that, I challenge you to consult the newspaper archives some time. As a senior, I remember when the paper was published every two weeks, held quality news and human-interest stories, and was as respectable as it's been. Not that it isn't respectable now in just about every sense that it was then... just slightly less regular in publication.
Instead of criticising the efforts of the editors, why didn't you step in and correct the problem yourself? Don't complain if you are not going to do anything about change.
For a period of time I was a member of the YellowJacket staff under the regime to which you pay homage. I tried to help be a voice of reason along with a few others, and these complaints largely fell on deaf ears. And then I saw the first issue and realized that I would do more harm to my academic credibility by having my name attached to such rubbish than I could possibly accomplish any good by the current editorial staff. Quite possibly one of the best things I contributed was a voice of a dissatisfied student to the then-chair of the Print Publications Committee.
In short, I reject your assertions that the YellowJacket was anything other than a terribly abortive effort that should have been put out of its misery under the aforementioned editorial leadership. To allow it to perpetuate was unfair to the students and probably did harm to the University's image. Further, to assert that the editorial staff in this case was anything other than fully responsible for unquestionable lack of quality noted by the original post is whimsical and foolish.
Posted by Vengeful Cynic at February 24, 2005 12:35 AM | TrackBack