2010-02-01T09:37:00.001-08:00

IvyGate published, last week, a link to the blog Against the DP under the headline “What is Going on at the Pennsylvanian?” We posited that the writer might have been a dispirited campus journalist bemoaning dwindling perks, and we were wrong. The creator of Against the DP has shared with us, in greater detail, her grievance against the student newspaper’s treatment of a campus tragedy.

Last week, I sent a condemnation of my university’s newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, to this website. I did not hold back my sarcasm. I did, however, hold back on exposing their most egregious transgression, though I alluded to it vaguely. Unfortunately, the issue no longer warrants sarcasm. It deserves somberness–but more importantly, it deserves attention.

Last November, Alex Ryles, one of my best friends and a Penn student, passed away very unexpectedly. The effect this had on the Penn community and beyond is impossible to explain. Of course, we were well aware that the DP would cover this tragedy, but the way in which they have done so has been repeatedly hurtful, insensitive, offensive, and abusive.

Any college newspaper’s coverage of a student’s passing cannot be expected to be perfect, but their errors are unforgivable. In article after article, the DP printed an incredibly hurtful phrase regarding my friend’s passing as if it were a cursory explanation for his death.

Two and a half weeks after my friend passed away, the DP printed an editorial entitled “Steps to Save Lives: The University’s measures to prevent students from committing suicide should be praised.” (I do not want to link to this article because I don’t want it to gain pageviews.) This article used Alex’s name as a platform to commend the University’s efforts to prevent student deaths. I demanded an apology from the DP, and tried numerous times to explain why this was inappropriate and hurtful, but the editor refused to issue a public or private apology.

Last week, his friends held a memorial for Alex. Because it was on school grounds, we knew the DP would come, but we were shocked to discover that they intended to send a photographer. We begged them repeatedly not to, but they were unsympathetic. (I would like to make clear, however, that the photographer agreed not to photograph us in moments that were particularly emotionally vulnerable.) And after all the grievances and hurt we had aired, they published an article that completely misrepresented the tone of the ceremony. The article stated there were smiles instead of tears, and focused on small anecdotes about my friend such as his fashion and love of candy. Many of us did tell wonderful stories about our friend, but we spoke mostly about what he meant to us personally, and our pain and grief were more than obvious.

I understand that the DP thinks of itself as a training ground for future journalists. But the loss of a student is not a training opportunity. It is not a chance for a “learning experience.” They cannot ask us to take them seriously when they fail like this.

The DP is funded independently of the University. But regardless of where those funds come from, the writers and editors are my peers, my friends’ peers, and Alex’s peers. The DP won’t listen to me, Alex’s family, or my friends, but I know their editors read IvyGate. These horrible failures and insensitivities must be addressed. I demand an apology from the Daily Pennsylvanian to me, my friends, and most importantly, Alex and his family.

AGAINST THE DP

2010-01-26T08:26:00.000-08:00

One of the hallmarks of college is disappointment. When we arrived here all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, many of us were immediately confronted with sad truths that had been masked by peppy tour guide exaggerations (or, as in the case of the Admissions Office’s Greek life mantra, “Not everyone’s in a fraternity or a sorority!”, straight falsifications). Perhaps the biggest disappointment is The Daily Pennsylvanian. Everyone from your high school guidance counselor to your older brother to the seedy alum who interviewed you (oh, only if you’re a legacy, natch) probably spun a misty-eyed, golden tale of Penn’s newspaper, how like OMG the copyeditor last year is now the editor-in-chief of the New York Times and like Walter Annenberg (W ’31) would roll into meetings at Seventeen and be like, “Guys, all I know is that my college newspaper waxed poetic like way better about bias-cut tops.”

But then you get here, and maybe most of us who vaguely consider writing important went to a DP meeting, and were like, Wait, what the fuck? I have to do this like, every week? Or every day? In this nasty window-less building? And I have to write about like, some state senator no one cares about talking to a room of 15 about why pet healthcare is totally vital right now? In the words of my personal deity Shania Twain, that don’t impress-a me much.

But we still pick it up everyday, and maybe one time we actually started reading a few of the articles instead of just looking at the flossy cover image of Joe Biden visiting yesterday and high-fiving Amy Gutmann, and we had—admit it, please—a pretty serious giggle over “teh meeting commenced yesterday,” not to mention the awkward leads and the editorials that never take a controversial position on anything except that one time some dude in Sigma Chi wrote about how awesome it is to work at a middle school in West Philadelphia for 45 minutes a week.

In short, it becomes quickly and painfully obvious to us all that the idea of the Daily Pennsylvanian as the bastion of college journalism, as an organization dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the dissemination of knowledge is an absolute fallacy.

This has all become particularly clear to me in the past few months. They have covered an issue that has had an intense, painful, unimaginable effect on a number of students—including most of my best friends—in a way that ranges from entirely and completely insensitive to factually inaccurate. They have caused me and a number of people very dear to me a great deal of near daily hurt, anxiety, and anger.

(Actually, the DP is probably responsible for a lot of things we hate on campus. Like the math and science natural requirement was probably an idea they had. Meningitis, I think, was probably started by them because they needed a good story last winter and that gave them what, like two months of material? Also—that crazy evangelist who stands outside the library on Fridays, telling us not to bone because we’re going to hell? He’s their fact-checker, I hear. One time, I think they came up with 34th Street, which is brilliant, but I think that was like totally a beautiful accident, like Columbus’s discovery of America or Jamie Lynn Spears’s baby.)

And so I lay this out to you: why the fuck are we reading this shit? Why are we tolerating it? Why are we putting up with these pathetic “journalistic” standards, this abuse, this daily waste of twelve-odd sheets of paper (which is, albeit, cheaper than most paper, and free to us, but not at all in the spirit of environmental friendliness that someone probably flaccidly defended in a DP opinion piece earlier this fall)?

I voice a resounding: fuck this shit. I’m not saying don’t read the DP. But can we voice how stupid this thing is more often than drunken pregame throwaways, please?

Though if you can not read it…don’t. Don’t humor it—don’t even pick it up. Stand up against this bullshit, because we are better than this. We are better writers than this. We have more interesting things to say and superior ways to say them. We are better, more considerate, more ethical people than the current editorial board is trying to make me believe.