Somewhere in the pantheon of thankless jobs is the college newspaper staffer.
Not at the top, certainly. But somewhere on the list is a place for those who work long hours for little money just because they think it’s important. In return, they absorb the shots from family and fellow students that they are devoted to a dying craft.
It all becomes worth it though, when the paper comes back from the printer and when someone – anyone – picks it up and reads it.
So, if you want to hit the staffers where it hurts, deny them that psychic satisfaction. Steal the papers before they can be read. That’s what happened over the weekend at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland.
Editor Reno Sorensen first noticed something was odd when the paper stand in the library was already empty Friday morning. The Mast isn’t so popular that all copies of an edition that usually sticks around all week would be snatched up in less than a day.
On Friday evening, another staff member told Sorensen that all 300 papers in the University Center were gone. There were no papers in the Administration Building either. It got worse when they discovered that papers still available on Friday in Olson Auditorium, the science building and the math building were missing by Monday.
Of 1,500 papers distributed, some 700 were missing.
Random act? Not spread over four days. Booze-fueled vandalism? Not on Sunday (hopefully). Recycling run amok? Then why leave the remaining issues from the week before?
“The person was clearly targeting the latest edition,” said Doreen Marchionni, the paper’s faculty adviser and former News Tribune editor.
Mike Hiestand, an attorney in Ferndale who consults for the Student Press Law Center of Arlington, Va., said thefts of college newspapers are nearly always based on the content. And it is a growing problem nationally. Hiestand says incidents range from 15 to 38 a year, from a few hundred papers to thousands.
“There was a big learning curve by police to get their heads around the notion that you can steal a free newspaper,” Hiestand said. But even free papers cost money to produce and print, and advertisers expect their ads to be seen.
What in the May 6 issue might have caused someone to take it? There was coverage of the student rally against gender and sexual violence, a column on the propriety of students celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden, a treatment on whether colleges like PLU should accept undocumented students and a story on a record-setting baseball player.
But one article was controversial even before it was printed. “PLU Perseveres” celebrated the women’s softball team’s first 30-win season since 2003. But it also told how the team responded to controversy last year over complaints that the coaching staff used profane and abusive language with players.
Writer Kari Plog said an athletic department administrator sent her copies of an email from some players objecting that the story would focus on the player grievances that led to a college investigation but no findings of misconduct. (Note: Plog works as a part-time sports clerk at The News Tribune).
Coach Erin Van Nostrand said Wednesday that she didn’t know papers were missing and doubts anyone associated with the team is involved.
“They’re not those kinds of kids,” Van Nostrand said.
Greg Brewis, PLU’s director of communications, said the university takes the matter seriously.
“This was both a theft and an assault on the integrity of our journalism program,” Brewis said. “We are conducting a thorough investigation and will bring disciplinary action against the thieves.”
In the meantime, Sorensen and his staff are doing what they should do – covering a news story and commenting on why they think it is important.
And to make sure the right people win – the people who create the paper rather than those who destroy it – they will reprint the purloined paper and insert it into this week’s final Mast of the year.
I can see the teaser now: “Inside: The stories someone at PLU doesn’t want you to read!”
Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657
peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
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