One-Shot

I Hate the Emerald

It is really difficult for me to say I hate the Oregon Daily Emerald. As a former employee of the Emerald, I still like the paper as a whole, and I had the happiest moments in my life working there.

When I was there, I did not care much about the content of the newspaper. I did my job for bringing news to the readers and care less about what is going into the paper every day. I have no right to intervene with regard to the content.

You may feel weird to hear that, as a fee-paying student, you have no say about the content of your daily newspaper, to which you subscribe every single day while you are paying the tuition.

Yes, everyone should respect the publication and reporters who work there, although they, include the newspaper and the reporters, are not professional. The 101-year-old daily publication is not professional enough to get you an exemption from taking Reporting One in the UO School of Journalism and Communication if you are a news/editorial major. Some of the reporters have not had reporting one when they start working at the Emerald and some of them are still taking Writing for the Media - one of the four lower-division core classes in the School of Journalism before students are admitted for full major.

However, no matter what you say, people up there in the Emerald, especially the one called Editor-in-Chief, would not bother listening to you. The Editor-in-Chief would say she (or he, to be fair without being gender specific) is professional enough in a "student newspaper" to determine what you should read, not what you want to hear.

What I hate is the repetition of coverage on the same issues, biased opinion and arrogance. Don't think that the Commentator is the only opinionated publication on campus - the Emerald is not much better than the Commentator. The difference between the Emerald and the Commentator is that the Emerald has more human power, better technology, money, and last but absolutely not least, arrogance. Need proof? Here it is. Repetition: Do you still remember the whole Worker Rights Consortium ordeal? If you are a loyal reader of the Emerald (do they still exist?), you may never forget the phrase because you come across front-page articles that talk about President Frohnmayer, his signing on with the WRC, and Phil Knight's withdrawal of his donation for Autzen Stadium, almost every day this term starting as early as March 30. By "as early as", it means I ignored those that have mentioned in the previous terms. After almost more than 40 days of struggle, if you are not involved with the Human Right Alliance and Survival Center, you may not care any more about that. It you feel sick from hearing any word with W, R and C in it, you are fine. But people at the Emerald do not understand that. They need articles for the paper and so people who manage the content of the newspaper need to dig something out from the dirt everyday. Do they understand the concept of "closure?" Probably they don't because they "believe" students have to be annoyed daily about something that is no longer the top news of the week.

One-Sided Opinions: aka bias, does exist at the Emerald. Do you still remember the ASUO election ordeal? Not the Breslow-Magner vs. Gabbe-Larson battle and the series of grievances that were filed by various parties, but the ASUO ballot measures. The Emerald editorial board endorsed seven of the eight measures in the election, but failed to endorse the one that deals with "incidental fees be increased by approximately $1 per student per term for a period of two years to generate $50,000 per year to allow the Office of International Education and Exchange to purchase books, periodicals, supplies and equipment, to staff an International Resource Center within the International Lounge in the EMU?"

The people in the editorial board are ignorant enough to say that "The resources offered by this program are redundant for those in the University system, especially the highly esteemed Knight Library. The Programs Finance Committee already turned this project down." If you do not care about international students, you may not care about the ballot measure getting support. But, on a campus that promotes "diversity," a student publication has failed to educate the students about the importance of the resource center. As International Student Association co-director Haya Matsumoto wrote in a letter to the editor on March 1, "You may be surprised and impressed to learn that you attend one of the major public universities in the United States in terms of percentage of international student enrollment. Yet, there is not a permanent facility on campus that promotes informal cross-cultural exchange among international students, as well as between international and American students, or supports their lives at the University. ... About 10 percent of the University students come from over 80 countries. Many others travel overseas. It would be shortsighted to state that the center serves only the international community, for its purpose is to increase the interaction among all university students."

Matsumoto once said that she contacted the Emerald on several occasions to get the attention of Jeremy Lang, Student Activities Editor of the Emerald, to report the initiative of the International Resource Center. But no one did anything. Instead, the Emerald rejected the initiative and said something about the resource center being a redundancy to the campus.

Did the reporters do any research about what is available in the Knight Library? Obviously, not. They didn't bother to move their sorry butts to the Knight Library to check the validity of their sayings.

Did the reporters talk to anyone from the ISA? Hell no. Otherwise, people from the ISA would not have set up a table in the EMU explaining the whole deal to students.

Unbalanced Coverage: Have you ever thought about the students who are in a sorority or fraternity? Do you think half of us are frat guys or sorority girls? The answer is no. Approximately eight to nine percent of all University students are in Greek houses. The population is almost the same as that of international students.

But there is more news coverage about things that happen in a frat or sorority house rather than from an international student organization. When I was working at the Emerald, I was responsible for multicultural issues - news about all ethnic student groups. One of my colleagues was responsible for covering the student government and politics, and the remaining reporter was responsible for general assignments, which means covering anything not already covered. This reporter picked up more news from the Greek system than from any other, and the editor allowed most of this information to be reported.

But think about that: the reporter has no way to control what goes into the paper - he or she is responsible for covering the news, write it and put it into the paper.

Edward Yuen, a senior majoring in Journalism, is a former Student Activities reporter for the Ol Dirty Emerald