[Boston-editorial] against centering Student-Workers article...

[Pete Stidman]

I had a huge issue with Pfieffer over omitting one
phrase from an article he wrote in the past, so I
wouldn't touch it.  

If someone would like to email him go ahead, but it
would take massive changes to satisfy me, like
changing the whole subject of the article to something
like "one protest happened at Umass, one strike
happened at yale and columbia"  because thats what
this article really contains.  

I don't think it's solid, I don't think it's very
good, I think it's very weak because it is unfocussed
and incoherent.  The use of the word embryonic late in
the story has no effect on the main drive of it that
exists in the title and early stuff.  That's like
titling an article "Bush is Dead" and then in the last
paragraph saying "well actually he's not really dead
sorry"  the title and the first graph are the most
important.  

So if anybody feels like talking to bryan about it go
ahead, but I think he gets alot of airtime from us and
this one doesn't cut it.  It probably wont be a huge
deal for him, and maybe it would be better if he
decided to contact us and then we can tell him why. 
He might be in a better disposition to understand or
listen that way.

-Pete







 
--- Matthew Williams <mw21 at mindspring.com> wrote:
> If you hadn't said anything, I would have centered
> the article.
> 
> I agree that the rhetoric in the title and the first
> few lines is a 
> little over the top, but on the whole it seems like
> a solid article. 
> And he does refer to the student-worker movement on
> campus as 
> "embryonic" later in the article.
> 
> May be we should contact him about editing out the
> over the top 
> rhetoric? Or can we do this ourselves without
> consulting him? I guess 
> we should talk about this Sunday--if we want to
> allow ourselves to edit 
> articles we feature for things like that. If we do
> it after we press 
> the feature this article button, the original is
> saved, so we can 
> always revert if an author has a huge issue. I
> certainly edit titles 
> from time to time. If we do decide that we are
> entitled to make edits 
> such as that, we should put it clearly in our
> editorial policy.
> 
> -- Matt
> 
> On Apr 22, 2005, at 6:53 PM, Pete Stidman wrote:
> 
> > sorry to be repetitive, I just read it through and
> the
> > only thing he offers as evidence for the claim of
> > things rising to a "fever pitch" and the
> "beginning of
> > a movement" is a list of events happening, mostly
> in
> > the northeast.  All of this has apparently been
> culled
> > off the web, which is OK I guess (actually his
> list is
> > not even close to complete) But what is missing is
> a
> > comparison to recent years (spring is always a
> busy
> > time at the universities), and any sort of strong
> > connections to community (another claim of his
> title)
> >
> >
> > I just think it's a little naive to say that wow,
> the
> > revolution is starting here, just because a bunch
> of
> > relatively small protests, strikes and other
> actions
> > are happening at universities.
> >
> > If we saw, say widespread huge protests at the
> > majority of univerisities accross the US now there
> you
> > have something, but this could be similar to last
> year
> > or two years ago for all we know (from reading the
> > article)
> >
> > There are also some other claims in the article
> that
> > are not founded.  Like saying "hundreds of
> thousands
> > of students, maybe millions" are actively involved
> in
> > counter recruitment is a pretty bold claim, and
> how
> > would he back this info up?
> >
> > I'm not against trying to psych people up a bit
> but I
> > am against doing it with exaggerations and
> untruths.
> >
> > In addition, the bulk of this article is really
> about
> > two actions at Umass Amherst and yale-columbia.
> thus
> > it holds a misleading title in another way.
> >
> > So I guess I block this article being centered at
> > all....
> >
> >
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