Extreme Disappointment
So, the Times sent up an editor to investigate this Eric Slater story. He never talked to me about what I found.
This whole deal--both how the story ever managed to get printed in the first place and the Times's subsequent (lukewarm) reaction,--has placed a real dent into by love of journalism. These high and mighty paper like the Times are the goals students like me are supposed to be reaching for, then they turn around and print crap like that, then don't even acknowledge when they screw up? Everybody in Chico knows that the correction they ran was putting a band-aid on a severed leg. But he's going to get away with that and his "apology."
Letting Slater slide with journalism like this is just a prime example of why the public at large hates journalism. Because they're not really disliking journalism, but the pseudo-journalism that throws common sense and ethics out the window because it decreases the sensationalness of the story are what they see. The only way to clean journalism up and get people to understand journalism is to get journalists that write things like Slater wrote either out of the game or make them stand up in front of the world and say "I screwed up" instead of sliding off an email that doesn't even say what he did wrong, and talks more about a damned motorcycle and filing a story in Afghanistan with tracer rounds being fired off (big whoop. You and thousands of other journalists, dude). Letting them slip through the cracks--no matter how long they've wrote, or how many awards they've won--just gives the haters justifiable reason to hate.
There's been some points over the last few days where I've seriously considered giving journalism up. Maybe Prof. Nuwer was right when he told me to find another profession while I was fact checking that Times story. Not because I'm bad at it, because I honestly feel I'm not, even at this early point in my life. But because this profession is going to hell in a handbasket, and nobody in a genuine position to do anything about it is willing to lift a finger. Chico can only do so much, because Chico is Chico.
What the Los Angeles Times decides to do over the next few days in response to this story is going to have a significant impact on what I do with the rest of my life. I doubt that will have any influence in their actions, it's not like I'm pulling advertising like GM just did. But, I'd thought I'd just let it be known.
Context information:
Read "Hazing Death Highlights Chico's Greek Life" printed in the Los Angeles Times on March 29, 2005, written by staff writer Eric Slater.
Fact error list in that story I compiled, printed in The Orion
This whole deal--both how the story ever managed to get printed in the first place and the Times's subsequent (lukewarm) reaction,--has placed a real dent into by love of journalism. These high and mighty paper like the Times are the goals students like me are supposed to be reaching for, then they turn around and print crap like that, then don't even acknowledge when they screw up? Everybody in Chico knows that the correction they ran was putting a band-aid on a severed leg. But he's going to get away with that and his "apology."
Letting Slater slide with journalism like this is just a prime example of why the public at large hates journalism. Because they're not really disliking journalism, but the pseudo-journalism that throws common sense and ethics out the window because it decreases the sensationalness of the story are what they see. The only way to clean journalism up and get people to understand journalism is to get journalists that write things like Slater wrote either out of the game or make them stand up in front of the world and say "I screwed up" instead of sliding off an email that doesn't even say what he did wrong, and talks more about a damned motorcycle and filing a story in Afghanistan with tracer rounds being fired off (big whoop. You and thousands of other journalists, dude). Letting them slip through the cracks--no matter how long they've wrote, or how many awards they've won--just gives the haters justifiable reason to hate.
There's been some points over the last few days where I've seriously considered giving journalism up. Maybe Prof. Nuwer was right when he told me to find another profession while I was fact checking that Times story. Not because I'm bad at it, because I honestly feel I'm not, even at this early point in my life. But because this profession is going to hell in a handbasket, and nobody in a genuine position to do anything about it is willing to lift a finger. Chico can only do so much, because Chico is Chico.
What the Los Angeles Times decides to do over the next few days in response to this story is going to have a significant impact on what I do with the rest of my life. I doubt that will have any influence in their actions, it's not like I'm pulling advertising like GM just did. But, I'd thought I'd just let it be known.
Context information:
Read "Hazing Death Highlights Chico's Greek Life" printed in the Los Angeles Times on March 29, 2005, written by staff writer Eric Slater.
Fact error list in that story I compiled, printed in The Orion
Robert said this @ 6:55:00 PM
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