Welcome to the newspaper world, Auburn Plainsman

At my old shop, I reminded volunteer writers that the newspaper they were writing for was a professional newspaper, and even if they weren't getting paid, I expected professional effort.

You didn't have to write like a 30-year veteran of newspapers, but I wasn't going to accept slipshod work. When I wrote for my *community college* newspaper, I put forth the effort. In the middle of a sappy love letter to the editor, his beard (the girl he passed off as his girlfriend at the time) actually asked him, "is forever_town a paid member of The Godless College Times? He really works hard." My editor at a biweekly niche paper at the big university wrote in her farewell column that I worked for the paper "as if it were a full-time job with benefits."

Maybe you have to get paid to be a professional by strict definition. You don't have to be paid to act the part if you're serious about getting into this business.

 

What makes our dirty laundry sacred when our jobs often include us reporting and writing opinion columns on everyone else's dirty laundry. We report on everyone else's layoffs, we "follow the money" when it comes to government and other business practices, but yet, when it gets to our own business, we don't report. Only recently have there even been online stories about the layoffs at some papers, but most of the time, those go completely unreported, as if the editors and bean counters both hope no one will notice.

I'm not saying that this was the right way to handle the matter, but just because it's our business and our co-workers, it's not sacred.

 

Reporting the departure of a business manager or other staffer is one thing, but airing dirty laundry is taboo.

That said, apparently this goes much deeper than a business manager not selling ads. The problems have been pervasive in that department and others for years.

Still, you don't do what the Plainsman staff did. It is petty and unprofessional.

 

Reporting is one thing. Expressing concerns professionally is one thing.

The Auburn Plainsman did neither. It essentially blamed all its problems on the business side and refused to own up to even a minimum of responsibility on the editorial side. This is not reporting on the failures of government or big business. This is not *reporting* on the failures of The Plainsman. This is a whiny diatribe that has no business on the editorial pages of a newspaper.

I'd say the same thing if they'd written an editorial with the exact same tone about the university president or city council or the local Wal-Mart. Reporting the facts or making reasoned arguments is what we're supposed to do, not be whiny bitches seeking to wash our hands of failure.

 

I think that, like quoting another reporter, the behind the scenes stuff is taboo and -- more importantly -- doesn't serve the community.

Like the editorial said, the Plainsman is a training ground. Hopefully, these scribes-to-be learn and move on.

If we ever meet, you'll have to explain this to me over a couple of brews.

 

Be glad to.

 

This is a big no-no. Keep your dirty laundry in-house. Newspapers are like sausage, the results are usually good, but the process...not so much.

 

Seems like everything about Auburn is just a clusterfuck...

 

My college's newspaper pulled a similar stunt.

One of the main players in that debacle has since been laid off.

What goes around...

 

As a guy who used to cover Auburn athletics, I can tell you that, unequivocally, Auburn is a clusterfuck.

Campus is filled with legacy kids and spoiled white-breads that have a sense of entitlement that is truly bizarre. Of course, it has produced fine journalists over the years, and not everyone on campus is a frat boy, but this editorial does the school no favors.

I guess we shouldn't be so surprised that the Deep South is a decade behind the times. Hell, some might say a decade late is progress.

 

Al.com says the manager has resigned, but the link is broken. Here is what Google saved. No idea if the story is still valid or not.

http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/02/auburn_university_newspaper_ma.html

 

Curious. Busted link, but the tease is still on their front page: http://www.al.com/birminghamnews/

So ... if true, is this a sign that the students had a point, or the manager saying, "You know what? I don't need this crap"?