Newspaper Death Throes, Student Edition

I know what you're saying, but unfortunately, that's a sobering reality they're going to have to deal with one way or another.

Just because you're a student and you're learning doesn't mean you get Carte Blanche to every life experience, as sympathetic at heart to that idea as I might be.

And, again, it's not as if the IDS isn't sending anyone.

 

For some of these kids, this may well be their last experience in daily journalism. Whether through opportunity or necessity, they may not become reporters.

And should that happen, their management's actions here justify a decision to leave journalism behind.

 

OK, so the IDS ponies up and sends all three.

What journalism might be missed because the IDS decided to double-down on the budget so they could have a life experience? Where do they cut the costs at?

Their life experience might rob some other IU journalist from a similar life experience in another realm of coverage.

Forget that, maybe IU survives Portland and makes it to Atlanta, but since they blew their wad on Portland, they can't send as many to the Sweet 16.

 

Do the kids at Northwestern deserve to cover an NCAA tournament? I'm sure they work just as hard.

 

Okay, I guess I do see the problem after reading/thinking about it.

 

We all work hard. The moral of the story is instead of working for the paper, try to be a student manager so you can go on these trips.

 

Who's saying the IDS needed to pony up more money?

The IDS wouldn't have had to spend money here.

Take the donations. Let the kids go.

 

What about that life lesson of sticking by your ethics? If I'm the IDS reporter caught in this situation, I would refuse to go. Because, in effect, you're selling yourself to go on an assignment the paper can't otherwise afford.

And if that reporter acquiesces and/or condones a donation to go cover the tournament in this manner? I don't want any part of hiring anyone who thinks it's OK to sell out their ethics to a well-intended, but wrong-headed bidder.

 

Apparently the kids were already going on their own dime, weren't they? So wouldn't it be more appropriate to say, "Take the donations; get plastered on the day off between rounds"?

 

Aren't most independent student papers non-profits that accept donations all the time?

What it it wasn't to go on one trip, but instead to buy cameras and computers? Would that be unethical?

I guess I need the ethics quandary spelled out. Paper wants to cover something, uses the available resources (alumni base) to attempt to do it. The money only allows them to do something they already planned on doing.

And if we were to make a stink about that, do we also complain about the ethics of student newspapers that (gasp!) take money from the very school administrations they have to cover?

 

What's inexplicable about sending a photog? Don't they need art?

 

Writers who have been with team all year provide insight. What would the student photog get that AP wouldn't?

Ethics are important.

This was navel-gazing. Selling out to a bidder?

Alums trying to help out are "bidders"? The idea was reimbursing dudes who were planning to go.

I know, I know . . ."slippery slope!!!"

What the donors apparently should have done was purchase ad space, and ask that the money be earmarked for travel for IDS basketball reporters. THAT would have covered "ethics."