The College needs to cozy up with the media.
Though our campus has attracted - and will continue to attract, no doubt - our fair share of coverage, and though we are home to three newspapers, a television station and a radio station, we are woefully under-educated about media relations and journalism.
This is unfortunate, as we have proven time and again - routinely and in the heat of the spotlight - that we have above-average smarts.
We have no journalism department. We have no journalism classes. Indeed, we have only one professor who lists “media” as an area of specialization, Sociology Professor Thomas J. Linneman.
Three times in the last four years, the sociology department offered a “media and society” course. In fall 2006, American studies offered “American Media and the Creation of America.” That’s it.
You can take advanced fiction writing, screen writing or poetry writing in the English department. You can take ethics or social theory in the philosophy department. But there is no media or communications primer anywhere.
Contrast with that New York University’s Center for Media, Culture and History, directed by NYU anthropology professor Faye Ginsburg. NYU offers graduate students a certificate in “culture and media.”
Harvard has a Media Anthropology Lab, a collaboration between its anthropology department and its department of visual and environmental studies.
Students at other schools in Virginia are only a little better off.
The University of Virginia has a media studies department which is “proud to now offer a minor.”
One can major in communication at Virginia Tech or at VCU’s school of mass communications.
The College needs programs and attention for student journalists too.
There’s no doubt that students here are well- rounded. But at the same time, the College should not be shy in educating students about journalism, even if we do not have an official "J-School."
Our papers do surprisingly well for relying on instructions passed down from older students each year.
Last week, Joe Luppino-Esposito ('08), reporter and former editor in chief for The Virginia Informer, demonstrated how our lack of journalism instruction can be divisive of the community.
Luppino-Esposito e-mailed Government Professor Rani Mullen with questions about a guest who spoke at the beginning of Mullen’s South Asian politics class on March 24. The speaker talked about internship opportunities in liberal grassroots organizations.
Luppino-Esposito's questions tried to pinpoint a bias. He asked for a response by 9 a.m. the next morning.
Mullen was offended by the tone of the demand. She copied her response e-mail to her 70-person class and some faculty members.
“I will gladly answer your questions with regard to the person who addressed my class a few weeks ago,” she wrote. “However, let me first say that I do not appreciate the tone of your e-mail.”
Luppino-Esposito also responded to the class, writing, “I would ask that you please refrain from your petty showmanship and attempt to embarrass me before my fellow students and professors by CC-ing them on your response.”
Dozens of Mullen’s students sent responses publicly as well as only to Mullen or Luppino-Esposito.
“It went from a general question to the professor to being a personal thing,” Luppino-Esposito said. “I was responding as ‘Joe Student’ rather than as ‘Joe Reporter of the Informer’ at that point.”
Luppino-Esposito was asking the right questions, but in the wrong way. Arguing with a professor-source and then with students (that is, the paper’s own readership) was not the appropriate avenue towards an accurate story.
But we cannot simply blame the Informer for bias. How can we hold students - even the unabashedly smart ones - accountable for following rules of the trade learned simply through trial and error?
The stakes are too high. Lack of good journalism is detrimental, and bad journalism is downright destructive to our community.
There are solutions.
The College should start an orientation program for entering students, a primer on college journalism. The College should offer a news writing class or, at minimum, an annual seminar that should include a session on ethics.
This would be as much a service to Tribe journalists in their future lives as it would be a favor to the community.
As we have seen first-hand, when the spotlight hits our school, the national media looks to student publications. Inadequate training for student journalists is a bad PR move on the part of the College.
What is perhaps more embarrassing, some professors still ask for review of articles in which they are quoted. This is outrageous. I take offense at professors who ask young, often inexperienced reporters to edit their quotes. Often these are the same professors who know our shortcomings and teach us with caring and compassion.
Professor review is wrong, just as administration censorship is wrong.
This is where The Flat Hat, The Virginia Informer and The DoG Street Journal have it right and deserve kudos. We do jealously guard our First Amendment rights.
But what use is this freedom when we are limited in so many other ways by our own ignorance?
Jonna Knappenberger is co-Editor in Chief of The DSJ and an opinions contributor. Her views do not necessarily represent those of the entire staff.