Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Cheer, it's over (I hope)

Well, it has been an interesting week. The whole cheer leading thing really took off. Today I met with the athletic director (Al Williams, great guy) and the cheer leading coach. Yesterday I removed the article from The Sentinel website and posted a formal apology. The more I think about it the more I believe I messed up. Of course there was no way for me to know that the writer and the cheerleaders had past history, but as the editor my job is to figure things like that out. So, I’m happily taking responsibility for it, well happily is probably the wrong adjective, maybe willingly or ploddingly… or stickily… no that doesn’t work either…. Anyways I’m taking responsibility for it. Click here to read the apology letter (Yeah, it's the one with the flashing red thing that says 'Breaking News').

So the meeting today was all about that. I apologized to the cheer coach and we generally just talked about how bad of a mess up that was. Overall it was a good meeting, however, at points I felt that I wasn’t really being listened to… but so is the plight of a 20-year-old.

So, the upshot of all of this? Personally I’ve learned quite a bit. Although we’re students and just learning, what we write and publish has an effect. So be careful. And as the editor it’s all my responsibility. It all comes back to me. That is my job.

So, I think the worst is over. The last couple of days won’t be missed.

And, as an aside I’m so, so, so glad I’m not wrapped up in NIC’s social drama scene. It sounds like a mess.

1 comment:

Terri said...

hi Eli....I'm so glad that you found the good "message" within the mess of this. This is such a gift for you, being that you are a journalist, and I bet now you will never ever ever (and never would have been, lol) a tabloid writer, lol. Free speech is great, and its messy sometimes, and people naturally want to use free speech to vent personal resentments disguised as "the news"....that is the dark side of journalism...and I don't mean dark in a bad way...it's just not as vibrant as journalism from the HEART. I think you are doing a great job Eli, and although this was a difficult situation to walk through, it had such valuable lessons in it. Namaste' Eli!!