Growing Pains

“He not busy being born is busy dying"-Bob Dylan

For years, I feared that if I criticized it, The Picket would turn to dust and blow away. But so much has gone wrong so often for so long that I am no longer scared. At this point, I am confident The Picket will survive.

The question is whether it will report newsworthy stories in an interesting and relevant style. That question remains....

For example take the recently published Orientation Issue. Please….

Thank goodness and give credit to the editors that it was published at all!

But is this painful effort the best we can hope to see?

The lead story is a case in point. It is presumably reassuring that the university is taking campus security seriously enough to stage mock emergency situations complete with hostages and potential victims.

But you have to read down to the sixth paragraph to learn that the exercise was not really reassuring after all: “Two victims went unaccounted for during the sweep.” In other words, if the mock emergency had been an actual “open shooter incident” those victims could have been left behind.

The reason for this kind of buried news lead is not that the writer and editor don’t know how to write. The problem is that it might cause discomfort to report what happened rather than what was supposed to happen.

Instead of boasting that the campus security are “taking strides to provide students with a safe campus,” the article might have begun by noting that the security forces are striving but not always succeeding in their noble mission.

I bet more people would have read the article if it had not pulled its punches.

I also would be willing to wager that more students would read The Picket if it did not focus on the public relations aspects already well-represented on the university website. Instead of stories about how well the administration is doing its job and how highly regarded Shepherd is rated, what if The Picket focused on those who are metaphorically or literally left behind?

What about a few more stories on the plight of commuter students juggling the demands of work, family, and fifteen hours of class credit?

Why don’t we read more about the non-traditional students who have become an increasingly significant part of the campus scene?

I would like to see more stories about minority populations on campus.

And though we know that there are problems with issues such as handicap access, we rarely read about these issues in the student newspaper.

And, finally, is it inconceivable to imagine an article devoted to the students who do NOT succeed at Shepherd? Why do so many students drop out or transfer after their first or second semester? It would be a challenge to get people to talk on the record about why Shepherd is not working for them. But it could make some interesting copy to read.

Nothing I am saying is original. Last year’s Picket editor Autumn Papajohn pointed me to the buried news lead. And my riff on the unrepresented voices is based on a talk given last summer by Kate Parry of The Minneapolis Star Tribune at the Associated Collegiate Press workshops.

I am just writing my ruminations.

But what if the student paper included the voices and the perspectives of the struggling individuals who are too often left behind in the parade of recycled news releases about the triumphs and prizes collected by the fortunate few?

The biggest news scoop of all might be just to tell it as it is.

-JL