When the system is broken, when its processes are wrecked and the network intended to support it has lost the power to lend aid, you fix the system.
The system is broken; and to ensure the survival of campus’ daily student newspaper, it must be radically mended.
Technician hasn’t faltered and fallen due to a lack of effort or passion from the students who run it, but because the umbrella which was supposed to provide it with a gentle hand has become Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s fabled albatross, dragging it down, tearing students away and weakening the staff.
The current leadership of 25 or so dedicated senior-level staffers has attempted to persevere through the debilitating hindrances for love of providing the campus community with an entertaining and informative news service 155 times a year, but it has dwindled and suffered during the last five years. The outside pressures have grown and the best efforts of the staff have been reduced to the point where it must stand up against a system which has wronged one of students’ oldest defenders and watchdogs.
The symptoms of the injury have shown in many forms during the past semester, beginning with the removal of Technician‘s editor-in-chief, Ty Johnson, and ending with the hiring of a new editor who is poorly suited for the demands of one of campus’ most difficult leadership positions.
The problem isn’t the new editor, though; much of it is the process which unanimously led to her hiring. Instead of being based on the merits of a well-vetted application reviewed before Student Media’s Board of Directors, the applicant was recommended by an ill-equipped advisory board, which didn’t fully understand the staff’s concerns and never heard them since the executive session where deliberations took place contained no editors from Student Media’s publications.
Additionally, the advisory board received the five candidate applications the day of the selection-and-interview process and was essentially tasked with selecting a leader for campus’ 90-year-old newspaper from a single interview. It would be akin to selecting the president of the United States after only a week of campaigning; it’s ludicrous — perhaps worse, unethical.
The process should have been subject to open records laws, producing a set of easy to view minutes and providing clarity on the selection — not smoke screens.
But can the process really be to blame? Who set up the advisory board in the first place? Where did it come from?
The Student Media Board of Directors did not form the board, which issued a hiring recommendation for the first time this year. It came together as a result of special invitations from the advising unit that was supposed to help students with their journalism, not set up the system by which they are hired. It’s a dramatic breach of power and has led to low staff morale from what has been perceived as a corrupt process. The advisory board, which came out of a desire to alleviate the Student Media Board’s long deliberations into the night, returned a result that was stranger than fiction and left a room full of Technician staffers, including the editor-in-chief elect, in a state of shock.
The seeds of revolution weren’t planted in a day, though; they have been fertilizing for years in staff resignations concerning inequitable workplace policies, which border on harassment.
Quite honestly, the staff won’t take it anymore. This is an edict declaring the staff’s right to actual freedom, in word and in action; to the end of University infringement; and the electing of an editor from elected student officials and professionals alone. To provide students with a product the staff can continue to stand behind, there can be no compromise or tyranny. The staff has been trampled for five years and it is using this page to let the students know why the quality has declined and the staff shrunk while the bottom line has been outstanding.
Producing quality, informative journalism isn’t about bottom lines or staff diversity. It’s about a staff of tired, overworked student journalists working to ensure their fellow students, faculty, alumni, staff and the campus community receive the most pertinent editorials and facts every day. Students won’t know many of these faces or names, but they are what put this newspaper in your hand today.
If you believe in college journalism; its right to unassailable independence and freedom; and the end of the powers that have caused its decline at N.C. State, join us in our quest to change the status quo.
Consider signing the petition about this struggle if you agree with what was said here and, like the undersigned, want to see the staff’s current advising removed in favor of more student friendly, effective advising next year.
The Petition:
