Staff at UGA paper walks out after non-student editor appointed

I got my start at the Red and Black, so this hits home pretty hard for me. I can't imaging what my experience would have been like if we had had "professionals" looking over our shoulders and telling us what to write. It was a great experience working there and is responsible (good or bad) for me going into newspapers after college. Full disclosure: I'm no longer in newspapers.

That being said, these kids go to the Red and Black to get real-life experience working in newspapers. Well guess what ... this is it. Getting boned by management and the higher-ups is part of the game now. The bullshit only gets worse the higher up you climb. These kids make very little money (if at all) to work at the Red and Black, so the sacrifice of walking out comes with little financial cost. Imagine of their rent checks/tuition depending on the money they made at the paper. Do you think they would bet quite so quick to walk out? When the staff at my last paper was getting bent over the table by the publisher, I'm sure a lot of us would have liked to walk out. But we had rent to pay and mouths to feed.

I'm not saying what the brass at the Red and Black is doing is right. I hate it for the kids there. But this isn't all that different from what's happening at regular newspapers all over the country. You want experience? Here it is, for better or worse.

 

When the editor at my last full-time job tried to revoke a promise of editorial control over the section, I told her "good luck with your sports section," collected a few personal effects off my desk and walked out.

It's not for everyone, but it can and does happen.

 

Just to make one thing clear, the Red & Black is an independent student-run newspaper. The university has no control over the editorial content.
Kent Middleton, a journalism professor at UGA is on the board, but the University of Georgia has no control over the newspaper financially or in any other way. The offices are off campus.
It is controlled by a board of directors who (when I was there) mostly came from the journalism community and most were R&B alumni.

 

Yet that seems to precisely describe the editorial arrangement at the Missourian, and I've never heard a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about that. It's just a different model from the one used, to this point, by the Red and Black.

 

So let UGA go on record as to whose side it stands on. Their influence is key.

 

I laughed so hard after reading that in the memo. Having someone in charge who doesn't know how to spell "libel" portends great things for a paper.

 

The response from longtime R&B publisher Harry Montevideo:

http://www.redandblack.com/news/red-black-s-statement-concerning-resignation-of-student-editors/article_d79e8a12-e7c2-11e1-8d36-0019bb30f31a.html

 

Where does this leave the Red and Black regarding the all-important position of student newspaper sex columnist?

 

You're hired!

 

No, those sex columnists must always be young females who are hot enough that you'd want to do them but not so hot that you'd find them unattainable.

 

Anyone got a working link to the memo? None of the links -- here or on the website linked above in this thread -- are working.

 

The difference being is the Missourian is the teaching newspaper run by the J-school; it's never been independent. The Maneater is much more in line with the R&B than the Missourian is.