Same high standards apply to new, exciting media

As you’ve seen, there have been some changes to The Transcript, especially if you’re reading online.

This semester, our weekly standard black and white print editions will be supplemented by web-based color copies, available via email on computer, tablet and smartphone.

In addition to the online subscription, The Transcript will increase the multimedia news reporting begun over the past two semesters. We will also offer monthly commentary on the activities of your student government and green initiatives on campus, courtesy of our guest columnists.

These steps are an exciting change for The Transcript, as we adapt to the evolving media market and expand our work into new forms.

While we grow digitally, though, our staff—editors, reporters and photographers—will continue, as always, to follow the ethical standards and traditional techniques of professional journalism.

In the last few weeks of last semester, we as an editorial board were tested; we faced the kind of hard news stories that rarely occur on college campuses.

Two students hit by police cruisers while legally crossing the street, six days apart. The news that a now-former student had reportedly made threats against the university, and the decision whether to identify him after he was arraigned, knowing the controversy it would cause.

These stories may continue to develop over the next few weeks, and there may be similarly troubling news stories to come. As the new editor I would like to say that I support the decisions made by my predecessor, and they were in line with the high standards of professional journalism and quality news reporting we all aspire to.

At the same time, though, I’d also like to emphasize that as student journalists, we don’t enjoy having to report on stories like this occurring in our community.

The hardest article I’ve written was last spring, interviewing students whose friends and family avoided the Boston Marathon bombs by half an hour or less. I really didn’t want to write up that story, but it was breaking national news with significant OWU implications; someone had to do it. I told myself that would be my last story of the semester, that I would take the last three weeks off, and then the campus was on lockdown following a fight-turned-shooting three blocks away and I had to do one more story again.

So I just wanted to say, especially since there’ll probably be more serious news stories to come, that our attitude in covering these stories is not one of joy at how good it’ll look on our resume, but more “if not us, then who?”

We are Ohio Wesleyan’s journalists, the staff of the university’s paper of record, and it’s not a job taken lightly. Our duty is to report the truth and the OWU community’s public interest, not to the stories that groups on campus—or even the majority of students—want us to talk about, or not to talk about.

While we rely on the university for funding, decisions on what to print are not made by the administration, the trustees, faculty, fraternities and sororities, WCSA or any other student organization—not even the professors of the department of journalism can kill a story that isn’t potentially defamatory if we are committed to running it.

That’s not a challenge to any of the groups mentioned, but an explanation of how an independent newspaper operates on a college campus.

We as a staff pursue the stories we believe best serve the public interest and the tenets of ethical journalism—seeking and reporting the truth accurately and fairly, minimizing harm, acting independently and being accountable.

For example, many among us may not enjoy the harsh reality expressed by President Obama last week, when a report released by the White House said the American college environment puts women at the greatest risk of experiencing sexual violence. It’s not a pleasant thing to be reminded of, whether briefly on national news or in the pages of this paper. But we have a duty, as expressed in our staff editorial, to report on this, and bring it into the spotlight, as servants of the public interest.

While the section editors (News, A&E, Sports and Online) have control over their specific content, ultimately the final say—and accountability—over our content is with me, your Editor-in-Chief. I take responsibility for what we publish this semester, and I welcome any input—positive or negative—you wish to offer in the form of letters to the editor, which can be submitted to owunews@owu.edu.