Censored
My college newspaper The Transcript has been in the national news lately.
On April 2, we ran a front page that featured two stories: One focused on the 50 Day Club, an OWU tradition of five years in which OWU seniors (or anyone over 21, but is focused on seniors) that wish to sign up, must go to the local bar The Backstretch, every day for the last 50 days of school, and order two drinks. They don't have be alcoholic, but they must go and drink two drinks. The second story was about the possibility of installing surveillance cameras in the dorms as the damage in one dorm is extremely high.
We ran those two stories on April 2. On April 5-6, we had our largest prospective student visiting day of the year. At least one admissions staff member stole up to 275 copies of the paper from the campus center and threw them in the trash as to "protect" the school's image.
As anyone familiar with media law would know, this is illegal. We have the right through the First Amendment for free speech, and by taking this many papers, it is deemed theft. It was a huge deal on our campus and the April 9 issue ran a front page story with the headline "TRANSCRIPT CENSORED" and our editor-in-chief Mike DiBiasio wrote a beautiful editorial about the First Amendment and how this is stealing the newspaper, as well as stealing ad revenue from the business who advertised in that edition of the paper.
A reporter who specializes in the First Amendment, who was here on campus two weeks ago for the Journalism Department sponsored "GO FAR WEEK," a week-long celebration which focused on the rights given to us by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, works for The Columbus Dispatch. He wrote a story about it on his blog at the paper, and it ran on the front page of Saturday's Metro Page in the Dispatch.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer later picked up the story. As did the Associated Press. An article was written about it on the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education. And today at our weekly newspaper meeting, my professor said she woke up to a story about it on NPR.
This is very huge for us. It has brought us national coverage and not to toot my own horn or anything, but my review of Kings ran in the April 2 issue.
I'm still looking for the links to the various articles at the Plain Dealer and whatever the AP had, and I'm going to post them as soon as I find them.
On April 2, we ran a front page that featured two stories: One focused on the 50 Day Club, an OWU tradition of five years in which OWU seniors (or anyone over 21, but is focused on seniors) that wish to sign up, must go to the local bar The Backstretch, every day for the last 50 days of school, and order two drinks. They don't have be alcoholic, but they must go and drink two drinks. The second story was about the possibility of installing surveillance cameras in the dorms as the damage in one dorm is extremely high.
We ran those two stories on April 2. On April 5-6, we had our largest prospective student visiting day of the year. At least one admissions staff member stole up to 275 copies of the paper from the campus center and threw them in the trash as to "protect" the school's image.
As anyone familiar with media law would know, this is illegal. We have the right through the First Amendment for free speech, and by taking this many papers, it is deemed theft. It was a huge deal on our campus and the April 9 issue ran a front page story with the headline "TRANSCRIPT CENSORED" and our editor-in-chief Mike DiBiasio wrote a beautiful editorial about the First Amendment and how this is stealing the newspaper, as well as stealing ad revenue from the business who advertised in that edition of the paper.
A reporter who specializes in the First Amendment, who was here on campus two weeks ago for the Journalism Department sponsored "GO FAR WEEK," a week-long celebration which focused on the rights given to us by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, works for The Columbus Dispatch. He wrote a story about it on his blog at the paper, and it ran on the front page of Saturday's Metro Page in the Dispatch.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer later picked up the story. As did the Associated Press. An article was written about it on the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education. And today at our weekly newspaper meeting, my professor said she woke up to a story about it on NPR.
This is very huge for us. It has brought us national coverage and not to toot my own horn or anything, but my review of Kings ran in the April 2 issue.
I'm still looking for the links to the various articles at the Plain Dealer and whatever the AP had, and I'm going to post them as soon as I find them.