On 6 February 2002, Toons, an independent newspaper distributed in the Ames area (and thus serving The People's Republic of Ames) printed a blurb titled "More Nice Girls at ISU". It was a standard feature of Toons since I've been reading it; a picture of some local reader of the paper, with a funny description of how this person reads the paper and whatnot. This blurb featured three ISU students who were also, incidentally, editors of the Iowa State Daily, the student newspaper of Iowa State University.
In it, the students are proclaimed as editors of the Daily: "Sara is in charge of obscenities and slander. Wendy is responsible for libel and maliciousness. Valerie is responsible for tomfoolery and fiction." You can see the blurb here.
Apparently, one of the editors of the Daily saw the blurb in Toons and thought that this was a Bad Thing, which "...could harm the integrity of the Daily" and "...compromised their [the student's] ability to work effectively as Daily staff members within the organization and with the public." These are the words of Andrea Hauser, the editor in chief of the Daily, in an article published on the 11th, which you can see here.
Now, all day today, I kept expecting to look at Hamilton Hall (home of the Daily) and see a Giant Ego Balloon floating in the sky. Alas, I was disapointed, but not stifled. You see, I recognized the above average amount of self-importance present in the Daily's editors (which, sadly, is present in most college newspapers I've seen).
So, I responded the only way I know how: I gave them an award.
You see, a fundamental philosophy of mine is that there is a time (rarely) and a place (few and far between) to be overly serious. I don't think a humorous blurb in a local paper is enough to fire three students from a student run newspaper. And the Daily has a bad enough reputation (which I've been able to garner in less than a year of exposure to it) to allow stuff like this to be made an issue, let alone a front page news item. Remember, you're not the Washinton Post, and Deepthroat isn't going to be calling you any time too soon....
Update: 51 Chaos YOLD 3168. I sent a letter last Friday to Richard Lem, publisher of Toons, telling him how much I enjoyed his paper and telling him I glad there is someone with a sense of humor publishing in this area. I also sent him a copy of my Proclaimtion. He called me last night, asking for an electronic copy of that, which I e-mailed him. Lo and behold, in today's Toons was a copy of the letter I sent to him and my proclaimation. You can see it here. He must have had a late night. Once again, I state that Toons is the best paper in the Ames area, and you should all go out and read it, and not simply becaused he published my random wackyness.
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