Another College Paper Generates Firestorm

College is where many people learn limits and that seems to be especially true, when it comes to student newspapers.

In the short life of this blog, I've pointed toward a questionable column from a self-described provocateur at American University which has received some national press, a week-long learning opportunity from a text ad purchased by a Holocaust denier and an instance when the humor magazine at Georgetown crossed over a line.

Now, it's the University of Colorado at Denver's turn.

Most of the news articles for their April 1st "joke" edition was prefaced with the line, "Please read this fake article only if you can take a joke", which allows for an easy search and the overwhelming majority of articles are rather innocuous.

There's one about an intervention to combat the student Vice-President's Furby addiction; An article announcing a medical marijuana dispensary in the cafeteria; A how-to for opening a portal to hell and a culinary review of a local dumpster.

Then, there are those which dance close to the line, if not straddle it, inappropriately. A writer compares a romantic breakup to the Chilean earthquake. An article announcing that CU-Boulder will be going private because it's where all the "privileged white students want to party" and then there's the piece heralding the benefits of bulimia.

Though,what seems to be stirring up most of the storm is an op-ed written from the point of view of a racist from the reactionary right, entitled "Enjoy obamacare if you like payin for illegal mexicans" and an advice column called "Dear White Guys", in which they say minorities have more children and are looking to steal white kids.

The paper has now released an editorial, where they invoke the First Amendment, lament the fact that more than half of their run was stolen and say that the edition will be available all week.

To their credit, they also encourage people to write letters to the editor and to attend a protest this morning. Which, though they intended it as a joke, if there's a modicum of truth to their own sense of irrelevance, all this publicity and fanning the flames could get them more readers.

College Columnist Strives to be Provocateur

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Related: Alex Knepper's Original Column
Newspaper's Response to the Contreversy
Letters from readers
Washington Post article about the situation

90 Year-Old College Paper May Have to Close

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Background: Technician seeks restructuring
Editorial: Join the team, before it’s too late

Don't Like the Headline - Steal All the Papers

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Educational Exercise: Err on the Side of Freedom?

Holocaust-denier Bradley Smith purchased a one-month text ad on the website of the Badger Herald, the University of Wisconsin's student newspaper for $75 and though the paper's publisher and staff disagrees with Mr. Smith's message, they felt that they couldn't deny the advertiser's freedom of speech.

After the jump, a video report from Channel3000 about the initial controversy and a Holocaust awareness rally held in response, plus subsequent reports about a journalism ethics forum held on campus also from Channel3000, along with a text story from the school newspaper which contains embeds of the two hour discussion.

Joe Biden: Nice Guy

Hailey Howe is an elementary school student and a school newspaper editor from Austin, who winters and also attends school in Vail.

Last week, she dreamed of interviewing Vice-President Biden because he was in Beaver Creek on a skiing vacation and through a unique set of circumstances, aided by blind luck and the logistics of a small town, she was able to file a report.

Unfortunately, I can't find an online edition of her Texas paper, but the Vail Daily has the tale of her effort, along with a couple of excerpts.

Georgetown Humor Magazine Goes Too Far

News Crack

As part of a $905 million dollar press bailout, France will give the first 200,000 French citizens between the ages of eighteen to twenty-four, a free year's subscription to any of sixty approved newspapers.

I'm not sure how one qualifies as an approved French newspaper, but considering the resubscription rate experienced by one outlet who has done a similar promotion, France may gain 24,000 newspaper readers, putting the industry roughly, where they were twelve years ago.

Student Journalists Learn Real World Lesson

Student journalists at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois wanted to run an article about alleged drug use and drinking among the student body, but school administrators objected to the article's use of anonymous sources and told them that it was unfit to print in its current form.

Staffers at the paper decided to insert a blank page as a form of protest, but school administrators demanded a delay to "resolve sourcing questions".

After a meeting between the young journalists, their parents and faculty, the paper's staff was under the impression that publication would be on hold until next month, but instead, the admistration demanded an immediate printing without the contreversial article and another one about teen pregnancy. The students were given less than two hours to lay out their paper and were threatened with a failing grade, if they did not comply.

This resolution has prompted the students and their pro-bono attorney to complain about both, censorship and compelled speech.

WBBM - CBS 2 - Chicago (Video)
WBBM - CBS 2 - Chicago (Text)

BOLO Alert: Racist Tricksters

Using a front companies, a white supremacist group called "Victory Forever" has bought ads in high school and college newspapers in at least three states offering free music downloads as part of what the group calls, a nationwide recruiting drive.

The latest victim was a high school in Indiana and previously the group had hit a school in California, where according to the San Francisco Chronicle, they had maintained a dummy site until publication, then switched it for one offering "white resistance music", t-shirts, stickers and racist links after the ad had ran.