WAG - Woke up this morning, got myself a paper…
Oh my...
Upon glancing through the paper this morning, I realized two things about Sockdolager:
One - I forgot about the extra time that needs to be put into the production features. Due to all the extra formatting, topics that are written about one week won't appear until the next week. So the edition about the town's questionable motto won't come out 'till next week.
Two - Despite a facetious claim to be a closet “Nixon Republican,” the feature appears even more liberal today.
Of course, that is probably due to the fact it is asking whether or not Columbia is liberal, but that shouldn’t totally excuse it.
Check it out and see.
Note: The page is in Adobe Acrobat form. I figure the paper presents it this way because the online text-only version didn’t do the layout justice.
The definitions of the different degrees of liberalism wasn’t bad, and the liberal quiz was sorta good (it would have been better if it didn’t appear that it was written by a liberal trying to imagine what extreme beliefs of conservatives are [I could be wrong about the writers of the test, but that’s how it appeared]), but there was one feature that was mentioned by everyone.
The political map of Missouri (outlying everything from the Springfield Church of Ashcroft to Rush County [near Cape Girardeau] to the Jefferson City Pork Lovers) by itself is going to prompt the writing of a lot of letters. I’d wager they won’t all be happy.
Of course, it will just add a pinchful of tender to an already raging debate. Already there’s a discussions going on in the J-School asking whether or not this feature belongs.
An email was sent out where the head editor of the section, a student, tried to explain where there were coming from and why they took the approach they did.
The most interesting paragraph has been cut and pasted here:
How it got started This project all started because we felt the paper, which is staffed by student reporters, was lacking a student voice. But we quickly realized that attempting to create a traditional editorial page would not be very wise. We don't know enough about enough issues to regularly take positions on them. And we wanted to create a format that would take advantage of one of our distinct traits: our youth. We are also were extremely tired of the traditional debating lines that exist within the media. To us, the commentary in the media is too often just an extremely predictable shouting match.
Okay, I admit that you have good intentions, but you’ve just said that you don’t understand the format enough to be able to replicate it. If you don’t know how to mirror the fundamental format, what makes you think you can improve or transcend the original.
The word around the newsroom is that the feature’s days are numbered. I still hope the group can pull out something redemptive, but the window of opportunity will be closing soon.
Good luck Sockdolagers.
'You_need_it'
