2008 Woodie Awards
Clarification of Negative Content in "The Voice"
Ashley Smith
Issue date: 11/4/06 Section: Editorial
It has been brought to our attention at The Voice that some of our readers have felt that the content of our previous issues has reflected negatively on Fayetteville State University. We feel it is important for us to clarify the intent of some of our articles, to better help our readers to understand why we have chosen some of the topics that we have, and why we will continue to tackle pressing issues on campus.
If readers look to the first two editions of our paper, you will find that seventy-five percent of the content is either neutral or positive concerning our school.
Most of the criticism over the articles in our newspaper has concerned articles from the Opinion and Sports sections.
The Opinion section for any newspaper is an outlet for its readers and/or staff members to express their ideas on a particular subject or concern. More often than not, stories for the Opinion section of our newspaper are not assigned to writers; instead, our writers choose topics they would like to write about. These topics reflect issues that the writers feels are relevant to students at Fayetteville State, and are often intended to incite positive change on campus; Examples of opinion columns would be "Students Fees Pay For Gym We Can't Use" in issue one, and "Disruptive Classrooms: Environment not conducive to learning" in issue two.
Editorials also appear in the Opinion section. Editorials reflect the opinion of our newspaper on issues facing students, but will also be highlighting positive things on campus throughout the year.
Our Opinion section is not intended to offend anyone, but instead hopes to help students by bringing student issues into the public spotlight. Our intention as YOUR newspaper is to help to make this university a better place than we found it. Sometimes that means that we must highlight problems in order to fix them.
This has been the case in the Sports section this year. The newspaper received much criticism over printing a commentary piece about our football team that was critical of the team's performance. The article from issue one was not intended to offend the team, but was instead intended to motivate the team to perform better.
If readers look to the first two editions of our paper, you will find that seventy-five percent of the content is either neutral or positive concerning our school.
Most of the criticism over the articles in our newspaper has concerned articles from the Opinion and Sports sections.
The Opinion section for any newspaper is an outlet for its readers and/or staff members to express their ideas on a particular subject or concern. More often than not, stories for the Opinion section of our newspaper are not assigned to writers; instead, our writers choose topics they would like to write about. These topics reflect issues that the writers feels are relevant to students at Fayetteville State, and are often intended to incite positive change on campus; Examples of opinion columns would be "Students Fees Pay For Gym We Can't Use" in issue one, and "Disruptive Classrooms: Environment not conducive to learning" in issue two.
Editorials also appear in the Opinion section. Editorials reflect the opinion of our newspaper on issues facing students, but will also be highlighting positive things on campus throughout the year.
Our Opinion section is not intended to offend anyone, but instead hopes to help students by bringing student issues into the public spotlight. Our intention as YOUR newspaper is to help to make this university a better place than we found it. Sometimes that means that we must highlight problems in order to fix them.
This has been the case in the Sports section this year. The newspaper received much criticism over printing a commentary piece about our football team that was critical of the team's performance. The article from issue one was not intended to offend the team, but was instead intended to motivate the team to perform better.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 3
Jason Rhodes
posted 11/09/06 @ 11:14 AM EST
Trashing the football team's performance in the school newspaper is definitely NOT the way to help motivate the team to do better. What SHOULD be done instead is a show of continued support and belief that things will get better the next week. (Continued…)
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