2008 Woodie Awards
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor and staff of the WOU Journal,
Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: Post
"Controversy equalizes fools and wise men-and the fools know it."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
For the majority of my time at this university I have avoided the Western Oregon Journal because I knew from my initial experience what I would find: poor reporting, faulty creative arts reviews, and juvenile and irrelevant "culture" articles-all of this done with a high school (at best) understanding of grammar and convention.
I recently began faithfully reading the Journal as a result of the conflict which arose several weeks ago-the conflict which has drawn so much attention to the Journal and its Editor-In-Chief, Gerry Blakney.
Let me say that I continue to be unimpressed.
The Journal itself seems morbidly detached from the views or interests of its target audience-the student body. Were it a real newspaper, its vitality would be contingent upon its appeal to its readers; the journal is funded by continual university support-we continue to pour water into a leaky bucket.
Many current or former members of the Journal have expressed their incredulity at the passivity of the student body in the midst of the present controversy-why haven't we arisen in daisy-dropping, bus-sitting, bra-burning glory? The answer is quite clear: we have nothing for which to fight, no cause for which to stand.
Claims about the suppression of speech and the abridging of freedom (though certainly well-founded) fall on muffled ears; we who would hear and rise in outrage can't quite see the purpose of fighting for a newspaper that has never fought for us.
The unwarranted changing of by-laws, the deliberate cloaking of the Journal on Preview Day, and even the spark in the powder keg-the infamous e-mail claiming the Journal's slogan to be void-all of these very serious offenses would incite great riot upon a people whose paper reported anything brave or even relevant.
In the five-or-so past issues of the Journal (issues I've read cover-to-cover), there has been one meaningful article, an article that-under different circumstances-might have been a victim of censoring, and would have been worth fighting for (that article was the self-declaration of depression and possible eating disorder by the culture editor, Megan O'bright, in her narration of a recent breakdown). What an example of the bold and pertinent articles and observations that a newspaper should print!
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
For the majority of my time at this university I have avoided the Western Oregon Journal because I knew from my initial experience what I would find: poor reporting, faulty creative arts reviews, and juvenile and irrelevant "culture" articles-all of this done with a high school (at best) understanding of grammar and convention.
I recently began faithfully reading the Journal as a result of the conflict which arose several weeks ago-the conflict which has drawn so much attention to the Journal and its Editor-In-Chief, Gerry Blakney.
Let me say that I continue to be unimpressed.
The Journal itself seems morbidly detached from the views or interests of its target audience-the student body. Were it a real newspaper, its vitality would be contingent upon its appeal to its readers; the journal is funded by continual university support-we continue to pour water into a leaky bucket.
Many current or former members of the Journal have expressed their incredulity at the passivity of the student body in the midst of the present controversy-why haven't we arisen in daisy-dropping, bus-sitting, bra-burning glory? The answer is quite clear: we have nothing for which to fight, no cause for which to stand.
Claims about the suppression of speech and the abridging of freedom (though certainly well-founded) fall on muffled ears; we who would hear and rise in outrage can't quite see the purpose of fighting for a newspaper that has never fought for us.
The unwarranted changing of by-laws, the deliberate cloaking of the Journal on Preview Day, and even the spark in the powder keg-the infamous e-mail claiming the Journal's slogan to be void-all of these very serious offenses would incite great riot upon a people whose paper reported anything brave or even relevant.
In the five-or-so past issues of the Journal (issues I've read cover-to-cover), there has been one meaningful article, an article that-under different circumstances-might have been a victim of censoring, and would have been worth fighting for (that article was the self-declaration of depression and possible eating disorder by the culture editor, Megan O'bright, in her narration of a recent breakdown). What an example of the bold and pertinent articles and observations that a newspaper should print!
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