This is the first in an ongoing series detailing my thoughts on everything that is wrong about The Cornellian, which just had a new issue on stands today. As such, this post probably won't be very interesting to people outside the Mt. Vernon area. The Cornellian's web site has a policy of putting some but not all of its articles online, so I'll try to link when I can.
To The Cornellian,
While I think the idea of a student run newspaper is a good one, and I think there's a lot to talk about even on a small campus like this one, I find that nearly every issue of The Cornellian is a disappointment, especially in regards to the opinion page. Every few weeks, I am always able to point out multiple examples of blatant inaccuracies, specious claims, and downright unjournalistic ethics. Obviously to some degree my opposition to a large part of this newspaper is based on my own personal politics, but I feel that The Cornellian doesn't do anything new or challenging, and I think it probably could. Whether this requires getting an entirely new staff, I don't know, although I would doubt it.
Here is an abridged list of the articles I have problems with in Volume 128, Issue 8, with my comments. Of course you can choose to ignore any and all of these comments, but I think there is a lot of people who feel the same way I do.
Page 1, "Caucus in Mount Vernon" by Mariel Canas: This seems to be all information that could have been gleaned by looking at a Wikipedia page about the Iowa caucus. It's all interesting information that I feel pretty much everyone at this school already knows. I was a bit intrigued by the comments Senator Tom Harkin made about the process, including him saying that it is, "Democracy at its very best." Well, I and many others could very easily argue that it is a democracy at its very worst (disqualifying a particular candidate unless they get more than 15% of the vote, having candidate shills give caucus goers free food and gifts, basing the proportion of candidates on an informal head count, etc.) and it might have been more interesting to include comments by people who believe that the Iowa caucus is a media-controlled sham, and moreover induces a lot of patronizing fawning over Iowa voters by both candidates and pundits alike. That's why I was pleased to see Ravahn's Samathi's article on the subject, which I actually thought proposed something new and interesting, entirely apart from all the Iowan self-love.
Page 1, "A raise in minimum wage" by Jess Horn: This article has someone, asked about the minimum wage increase, saying, "It means I have to work less hours to make the same amount, which is great!" This is a really superfluous comment that doesn't merit inclusion. Surely you could find people who could argue for the minimum wage increase besides the fact that it means you work less and get more money.
Page 2, "Hookah: Safer than cigarettes?" by Heidi Mitchell: Is it just me or does CAFE have a committee that puts in one agenda-pushing article per issue? I don't see the reason for this article's existence, and neither apparently does the author, as apparently only one study has been done on the subject, and not a very conclusive study at that. Maybe this subject would be more worthy in a few years after a lot of research has been done. No one is probably going to argue that smoking hookah is particularly healthy, but it seems that the final paragraph in particular has very anti-smoking bias, even as it purports to say that there is not sufficient evidence to back it up. Yes, smoking is bad for you, but so is taking away the right to do with your body what you wish. Also, I would be interested to know of where in popular culture that tobacco hookah smoking is portrayed in a positive light.
Page 5, "Carefree train ride? Think again" by Clint Parry: I know this is supposed to be a humor piece, and I know humor is a subjective experience and it's sort of hard to criticize, especially when we're talking about a newspaper column. I just want to know though, have you gotten much positive feedback from this article? Has anyone thought it to be even remotely funny? Maybe I'm wrong, and if so, by all means carry on. I fail to see anything remotely resembling humor. Maybe I just don't take trains enough.
Page 6, "Please stop scribbling in my solitude" by Clif Ashley: I actually agree with this article, I only wanted to mention that Clif Ashley actually admits to "not bothering to commit to any kind of intense research," which is a disclaimer that I think needs to be used a lot more in the Cornellian, at least the way it's going now. So props to him for that.
Page 6, "Change I once stood for" by John Clogg: Again, there's nothing wrong with this article, although I am a bit tired of people making the insulting claim over and over again that he is a fit leader by virtue of his passion and oratory skills as opposed to any substantive accomplishments, which is a claim he would like to counter. One sentence sort of bugged me: "Obama appealed to our emotions while Gov. Richardson appealed to our intellect." You may think so, but speak for yourself. I saw both of them and I would say that Obama's ideas seemed a lot more clear and innovative than Richardson, and Richardson happened to make what I felt to be a few huge gaffes, among them claiming that it would be a good idea to oust Musharraf. I think a lot of people felt similar.
Page 7, "Don't spend what you don't have" by Vincent Anderson: This is a patronizing article ("This may come as a startling revelation, but unfortunately credit cards are not magic"--this is O'Reilly level smarminess) that commits the cardinal sin of treating its audience like idiots, and is moreover significantly less clever than it thinks it is. One can easily make points like the ones made here, that college students don't know how to manage money and that they often don't know the consequences of credit card debt, but to claim that somehow kids today are more likely to do this than in the past is absurd. Maybe you can find some statistics to prove this is true, but I don't think you can. College students have always been this way, and you definitely have no way of backing up your claim that somehow our generation is more "impatience and materialistic"--whatever that means--than previous generations. I'm always perplexed when journalists or pundits argue that previous generations were somehow superior to the new generation, which is always portrayed as lazy and vacuous. It makes me downright angry when someone of my own generation, so indoctrinated by their parents, tries to make the same argument and laments a time they can't even remember. Moralizing about whether or not to use credit cards when your purchase is under $10 is silly: sometimes you don't have the money on you and it's quite handy. Doesn't mean you're going into debt anytime soon, as long as you pay it later.
Also, I don't know whether or not your equating of Ronald Reagan with fiscal responsibility was supposed to be a joke, but either way I laughed.
Page 8, "Decision 2008" by Erin McNeill: Again, I don't see the point of putting stuff on here that you could get just as easily from Wikipedia. What's more, I find your decision to include only the top three candidates of each party incredibly offensive, especially to those who choose their presidential candidates based on their positions and not on their polling numbers. Maybe there is an issue of space, but with information so superfluous (Romney wants to "improve energy efficiency?" How controversial!), I don't see why spreading the love wouldn't help a little bit.
Page 10, "Movies of 2007: Good, better, best" by Jessica Jones and Melissa Bruce: I was going to say something about how it was convenient that all of the best movies of the year happened to be American studio releases with big movie stars in them, but I guess living in Iowa you don't have an opportunity to see much else unless you happen to look pretty hard. I also don't know how you can reasonably call a film "indie" when it is distributed by Paramount and has stars like Samuel L. Jackson and Justin Timberlake in it. I appreciate the refreshing comments about Tim Burton.
Page 12, "New sci-fi novel will have you 'Going Postal'" by Amanda Gibson: Why are you reviewing a novel that came out in 2004? Surely other books of note have been released since then. Is there some resurgence in popularity of the book that I am missing? I don't think it's usually policy to have a book reviewer read just any book, especially when it has absolutely no bearing on anything in the present.
Some suggestions I have for future issues: asking the local Bijou owner about their no R-Rated movie policy (and discussing discrepancies in the ratings system, perhaps); an investigative piece discussing what unaffiliated Cornellians feel about social groups, if anything; interviews with more professors, especially if they have been working on any valuable scholarship (same goes for students); interviewing students taking various graduate exams, and how it affects their lives and relationships.
Thanks,
Nathan Sacks
I think I'm going to make a lot of enemies out of this. Too bad. I stand for journalistic ethics, they don't. Not yet, anyway.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
How the Cornellian can be slightly better (and build your resume too): Join the staff. Yeah, the paper sucks, but it's obviously going to continue to suck if talented writers stay away from it. However, the main problem, I've always thought, is that it comes out like twice a month, so stories lose their relevance rather quickly. That problem could probably be solved if actual non-shitty articles were in there once in a while. Complaining is fine, but complaints without action is just a waste of your time.
Do you ever feel like Juell is the only person who comments on your blog?
I remember when I wrote that article in the web that claimed that smoking hookah was as bad, if not worse for you than smoking cigarettes, and there were a whole lot of people who got angry with me and asked me what I thought was wrong with the hookah bar. I contended that I had no problem with it, just with the idea that it's somehow not as bad for you as cigarettes, and people got quite angry with me anyway. GUESS YOU CAN'T PLEASE ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME (unless you're the Mythbusters. They'll please any crowd)
Post a Comment