It may be an abuse of my power to respond to a wespeak as it is being printed, but I believe it is important to give my side of the story regarding the WSA Coordinating Committee’s wespeak, “Letter to the Argus from WSA.”
First, I owe the WSA an apology. We have an arrangement to publish their agenda on Fridays and their minutes on Tuesdays, and sometimes those items aren’t printed. This happens because we forget, because we run out of space, and sometimes because they are e-mailed to us at midnight, long after all other submission deadlines.
I will not apologize, however, for using my judgment in choosing which events to use our own reporters and editors to cover. The Argus is not required to cover all WSA meetings, and does not have the staff to do so. It is our decision, and ours alone, which events we will cover, and sometimes we decide that a given WSA meeting will not produce an article with more information than in the minutes summary. We have to choose, based on the WSA agenda and availability of writers, when to cover a meeting, and in nearly every case I stand by our decisions. The meeting minutes, with all the pertinent information, is published in place of an article, to nearly the same effect. When the minutes aren’t printed, which has happened only a few times, I apologize again. We do our best.
I recognize the WSA’s importance to this campus, and how crucial it is that they communicate with students, but it is not the Argus’ job to ensure this. The WSA already has more publicity tools available to them than any other group on campus, with access to an all-campus e-mail list and consistent (if perhaps not always perfect) space in the Argus to publish their minutes, agenda, and a column.
The Argus will continue publishing the WSA agenda and minutes, not because we’ve been pressured to do so, but because we believe it’s important. And we will continue deciding which meetings to cover, and we will not allow pressure from anyone to determine what we write. Obviously this is a small campus, and influences are hard to avoid, but our job is to remain as objective as possible. I support the WSA wholly in their efforts for more publicity, and hope that the good relationship the Argus and WSA have had in the past can continue. But to function as a legitimate newspaper, we cannot treat any group differently from another, even one as important and powerful as the WSA. Publishing the minutes and agenda is already bending that rule; any further collusion is simply bad journalism.
We appreciate the WSA’s input, but I also ask that our judgment be trusted. For what amounts to about 15 full-time students and some beaten-up old computers in a dirty office on Broad Street, that seems fair to me.
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