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CARD 1:

In recent years, public trust in the media has declined.  The majority of Americans do not believe news organizations “report the stories they should be covering.” – Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

CARD 2:

Whether this trend continues depends on future media makers.  This is the story of student journalist at one of America’s top-ranked college newspapers.

[Printing press]

[Delivery of papers]

[THE PAPER – title]

[Campus shots]

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[Sirens]

GIRL:

Maybe we’ll have breaking news.  Yes!  Hi, my name is Erin James, I’m a reporter with the Daily Collegian; we’ve heard several fire trucks head down Beaver Ave.  I was wondering if you could tell me what’s going on.

JENNETTE:

Fire! Fire! Go! Go! The fire will not wait. God, who walks to a fire?  It’s a fire!

GIRL:

We found out that the 3^rd floor didn’t have a smoke alarm or smoke detector or anything at all. Which, like, according to the borough rules or whatever, each floor has to have at least one. And the ones on the 1^st and 2^nd floors weren’t functioning, they didn’t have batteries.  Um -- 

BRIDGET:

It’s not even that they weren’t functioning; it was that there were none.

GIRL:

Well there was none on the 3^rd floor and then the 1^st and 2^nd, they were not functioning.

JIMMY:

Do we know if the police are going to do anything about it?  Like is it possible that they are going to file criminal charges?

GIRL:

Possibly, I don’t know, he hasn’t finished writing it.

JIMMY:

Ok

BRIDGET:

So as one, let’s go ahead on the fire follow-up

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JIMMY:

Play that up big again.

JIMMY:

So what’s the plan for the trial, for the rest of this week.

GIRL:

Just kinda go to it, I mean.

BRIDGET:

But I mean --

JIMMY:

Well, this is a huge thing, we should be covering this like this is the trial of the century.  Like some really complete coverage of who these people are and just any other kind of interesting things they find during this trial too.  Cause we should really be covering the shit out of this and I don’t think we’ve been doing that so far.  

[Jimmy ID: Jimmy Young, Editor-In-Chief]

I started reading a newspaper when I was three.  It was really the first thing I ever read.  And I kept reading newspapers through my whole child hood and every time there was something going on in my neighborhood I would rush home and tell my friends and family right away what was going on being like oh my god you wont believe what happened. Then when I was about ten I actually started putting out my own newspaper it was just you know 4 or 5 sheets of paper stapled together.  My mom would sometimes copy them for me at work and I would just print out a bunch of copies and I had a little circulation list going.  Had about 20 or 25 subscribers, I was pretty proud of that. I collected money from them, [coughs] it was fun.

GUY:

And three, two…

Welcome to Journalist Round Table.  We’re in State College today with the Daily Collegian. We’re joined by James Young, editor in chief; Steve Swart, the sports editor; and Bridget Smith, the managing editor.   I just want to just ask you, do you have any sense how many college newspapers put out a daily paper?

A lot of smaller newspapers around this state would roughly be about this size.

JIMMY:

I think we’re probably about the 5^th largest.  Our circulation is 20,000, so we put out about 20,000 papers everyday day.  And we are ranked in many awards categories as one of the top 3 student newspapers in the country. This isn’t just a rinky-dink college newspaper.  We have over 40,000 undergraduates and I’m manager in charge of 200 people working in the news division. So we treat this like a professional newspaper.  We have people here working 20, 30, even up to 40 hours a week, on top of classes. 

BRIDGET:

We need lots of background.  It’s just sloppy, it’s really sloppy.

GIRL:

It’s only 4:30, we  haven’t even gone to wire yet

BRIDGET:

Alright, Jeremy you ready?

GUY:

Yes

BRIDGET:

James you ready?

JIMMY:

 Uh yeah.

BRIDGET:

Alright guys, wire!  

[Bridget ID: Bridget Smith, Managing Editor]

Attention please lets get started. Umm, alright.  Here is Friday’s paper lets tell me what you like.  

To be a real journalist you just understand how to find the issues read between the lines and find like deeper stories and dug under the surface. You need to have a thick skin, especially at a place like this. You are willing to go an extra step or 12 or 20. 

OK, page 3 is local and don’t forget the editors note.  Now quickly if we can just be quiet and pay attention, it’s hot and hectic.  Ali what do you like for front.

GIRL:

Umm, Dickinson or they only heard one testimony there are still four more.

BRIDGET:

I really have to be the one who pushes them and say its okay to ask ten questions and be more aggressive and you know, not just lay down and take people at face value and even if someone yells at you, you still have to ask the questions. You know, I’ve had reporters coming to me crying because someone raises their voice and its gonna happen but you have to get the story and it’s the only way you are going to get it. 

Alright guys have a good night. 

BRENT:

Jimmy, I think circulation might be a problem.  People are writing in jack shit. I have three and none of them are very long. I can’t even fill my letter space.

JIMMY:

Do you have ones from before you didn’t run?

BRENT:

No.

JIMMY:

It’s kind of scary.

BRENT:

I mean it’s a no-brainer what letters I need to run.  Someone from the College Democrats emailed me and he’s like, “So what criteria would get the best chances of getting letters published in your paper?”  I almost wrote him back and said, man, if you send us letters; they almost need to be printed.

JIMMY:

Our stated circulation is 20,000, but, um, that’s not how many papers are being picked up.  We had 18% returns yesterday. That’s the percentage of papers that were not picked up, and usually you want that between 8 and 10%.  So, yesterday 15,814 newspapers picked up. I have no idea what the hell is going on.  Why we’re having this sudden drop.

 It’s kind of scary.  We have to think about how we can turn it around somehow. 

JENNY:

It doesn’t seem like they go into any game with a different offensive plan based on the defense they expect to see.  But they’re not tailoring their game plan to the team they are playing.  I definitely think we should try to work on that.  See who we can talk to.  He talks to someone outside the program.  We need to figure out who that person is and go to that person.

GUY:

What’s up buddy, how are you doing?  

GUY:

Good.  Are you coming out tonight when Duton gets here?

GUY:

I saw Duton, he’s here.

GUY:

He’s here?

JENNY:

I don’t get a handshake?!?

GUY:

I’m going to sneak back and get some food while your introducing yourself.

GUY:

How are you doing Jenny?  

JENNY:

Good, how are you doing?

GUY:

I enjoyed your writing this week.

JENNY:

Oh thank you.  

JENNY:  There are some guys are very chauvinistic and you can tell they don’t think a girl belongs in the football media room and that angers me greatly. It’s like people see me in the press box and it was kinda like, oh little like inconsequential girl like go away but whatever I’m not going to go away so.

GUY:

Yes, yes run!   Intercept that shit.

JENNY:

If I ever played football I would be a linebacker and I like attack people.  He was like I could see you be that type.  I was like yeah that’s what I’m gonna play, take some people down.  When I was a freshman I just got so into football and I was always reading about it, always watching I was up on every little detail, every statistic.  

I think its like that greatest game you can ever play.  I just like the strategy that goes into it, like there’s logic if you see this person do this, do this or if not you check down to a different reed. There is just something in it that is inherently exciting, stimulating. I like using sports as a window to like open up other issues and if you can like, make, take, great understand of society a greater understanding of a racial issue, a sexuality issue, a political issue from reading that story then think of what you have just done you have grabbed the readers attention because its about a football player they want to know about and then once they are in they realize there are things more important then football, that’s very powerful.

TEACHER:

If you want to work for this paper or any paper, you have to believe that knowledge equals power. You have to believe that you’re in the business to tell stories, to cover news to give people information so that they can run their own lives.  

Ok, well my name is John Harvey, I’m the news advisor here at the Collegian. I think I saw jimmy.  That’s jimmy Young he is the top dog here.  Remember this is a student newspaper.  I work for Jimmy, alright?  He runs the whole show what he says happens. So you’re going to learn about theory from this program, but you’re going to learn because you’re going to be writing and thinking like a reporter, and you’re going to be a reporter. And you’re going to be doing something valuable for this community.

KAYUR:

I really love writing like the fact that the stuff that I create is created with words onto paper for others to see because everyone has a right to know what’s going on especially with administration, the government and I can get information that everyone else should be able to get that information. And so making it available for everyone, its just a real rush for me. [Kayur ID: Kayur Pate, Rookie Reporter]

KAYUR:

Well what I’m gonna have to do is I’m gonna have to dig a little bit, talk to Tom.

GUY:

Please verify it all.  Theyre making a profit and I brought this up to Dr. Alban who works with students….

KAYUR:

It’s hard to believe that there are already controversies, and I haven’t even been to all my classes, yet.  I think I’m missing one right now, probably. [Laughs].

JENNETTE:
Anything good, possible story?

KAYUR:

Possible story because remember how he called yesterday and he said UPAC cant run its political partisan speech so she was just trying to cover all this stuff up.

JENNETTE:

If all of this is denied like this could end up being a really interesting story for you next week.

KAYUR:

Yeah

JENNETTE:

Yeah like if you could I mean this is them not following their guidelines and rules and partisans speakers this could be big.

JIMMY:

 Uh yeah, I think, it is 7:30

GIRL: 

Alright, I’ll be up in a minute, Jimmy

GUY:

Is there a reason that the circulation is down.  Does this happen at the beginning of each term or -- ?

GUY:

Our circulation this semester is as low as I have seen it. We were down 8 ½% for the week average daily circulation compared to a year ago and I have had conversations with Jimmy, I know the news division is concerned about circulation. And so I think it is very important that we take steps to try to try to boost our readership, boost our circulation.  This continues to be a major concern.

JIMMY:

We have board of directors every month they oversee the budget.  They do not tell us what to do with our content or anything like that but they are the ultimate authority of the paper.  All newspapers are businesses that you know you have to make sure that you are working with the customers and make sure that they are happy and that we’re making money basically.

What ever happened with page 7?

Since we are an independent company we are independent from the university and our money mostly comes from advertising, if our circulation drops and it stays down, the business side will have to let the advertisers know circulation is down and the advertisers seeing that would be worrying about spending money advertising in the collegian and then you would get into some big trouble, we could have some budget problems. And that could lead to a whole down ward spiral where I don’t think we would be eliminated from existence but it would be a pretty bad situation for us over here.

TEACHER:

Readership is dying every where, the New York times and the USA Today their circulations are going down as well on this campus.  We need to figure out what students want to read.  My recommendation to you is to meet with your beat editors, pull together and say look we have a problem here there has to be something with the readership so the challenge for the news side of the Collegian is to find out what that is, what is it that young people want to read?

LAURA:

You must be Barb

JANITOR:

Yes I am

LAURA:

Nice to meet you Barb, thanks so much for letting me follow you.

JANITOR:

No problem, this is Gary and this is Marty Planau.

LAURA:

How are you?  Nice to meet you.

JANITOR:

So how did it feel getting up this early in the morning?

LAURA:

Its pretty tough, college makes you soft. I’ll tell you what college makes you soft.  

I got up at 4 o’clock this morning I had to set my alarm twice, because I’m doing a story about a janitor at Penn State.  Her name is Barb.  And I’m trying to get an idea about what her work is and who she is.

[Laura ID: Laura Baker, Features Writer]

What time do you go to bed?

JANITOR:

Umm, usually around 9:30, 10, and um  I work two jobs so when I leave here at 1:30 I clean personal houses in the State College area.  When you’re a single mom, you have to do that.

LAURA:

So how aware do you think students are about the work you are doing?

JANITOR:

Well, I think they are very passive where it’s concerned.  A student coming and going they really, I don’t think they just  have too much on their minds to really dwell on who’s cleaning this classroom or what not.  Unless there’s a problem, usually not too many people think of janitors.

LAURA:

I want people to see that there are other things going on on this campus, so I try to cover people or events that typically aren’t given any notice in our day to day dealings, um, in the newspaper. 

LAURA:

And she does volunteer work still too, and then on top of that she has all these other jobs.

GIRL:

Maybe you want to say it out right away that like that she’s in the maintenance section.

LAURA:

I got an idea. 

That’s why journalism is so great you meet tons of different people, with different people with different back rounds with different viewpoints; experience things that you have never experienced before and then share them with other people.

TEACHER:

Alright, now these are three photographs of a guy by the name of Bud Dwyer. In March of 1988 I was a newspaper editor and it was 11:15 and Bud Dwyer called a press conference cause of allegations and a long trial over fraud.  And he called everybody in and he pulled out a manila envelope and out of the envelope came a gun. And all the press was there and they all went “no Bud no” and he pulled the gun out and blew his brains out. Alright.  Right on the 12 o’clock afternoon paper deadline. Alright,  so you are the editor, you have these three photographs, these are the three you have to choose from, whose running which one, whose running the last one?

GIRL:

I think its eww, I, I, I, too much for me, I mean you can just imagine what’s going to happen next.

GUY:

You can imagine what’s going to happen but isn’t that the point of photographs there is nothing explicitly graphic, there is no blood no guts. I think a photograph ought to make you imagine something.

GUY:

It’s still an important picture just because…

GUY:

It’s gonna sell papers though if its on the front page.

GUY:

It’s what?

GUY:

It’s gonna sell papers

TEACHER:

Is that what its all about, just selling papers? Here’s the thing you want to come back and talk to people don’t make ethical decisions, don’t make decisions about ethics by yourself because what you think may be ethical after you discuss it with somebody you may realize you know what there is another way to look at this. We have no credibility in this business, we have no credibility.  You know that in, in the real world we’re like politicians, used car salesmen, like prostitutes and then journalists.  Like we’re way down at the bottom, no body trust us, no body believes us, so our credibility is huge we are constantly faced with ethical decisions.  Every single time you do a story every person that you talk to, how you structure the story, the photos that you use that’s what’s great about this business you are constantly making ethical decisions.

JIMMY:

People have been complaining lately that our diversity coverage is superficial  So we received an angry letter to the editor saying we show people dancing and eating ethnic food, whatever and like that maybe shows people in a stereotypical kind of way, but we don’t cover the underlying issues in the community.

BRIDGET:

I mean I think having more diverse people in the newsroom would spur more discussion.

JIMMY:

I don’t think we need any kind of affirmative action.  I think white people are capable of covering the issues.

BRIDGET:

Oh, I think they are, but I feel like it’s not as obvious for us.

JIMMY:
You mean we don’t notice it?

BRIDGET:

Yeah, I feel like there are some issues that maybe we wouldn’t think of like Camille’s, where do black woman get their hair done.

JIMMY:

Yeah.  I don’t think.  I guess if you have diverse news reporters they would think of those things. But the reporters we have now, we need to urge them to go out and actually think about those issues that are going on and how that affects them.

GIRL:

Good afternoon everyone, I’m vice president of black caucus and we called this press conference here today due to the climate that we face daily as students, as students of color at this university. 

GUY: 

At approximately 11:57 pm I was making my way home from south halls through Pollock where I was verbally assaulted by another student, with assault comments such as I’m going to kill you faggot, I’m going to kill you faggot and moved to threats like I’m going to lynch all you niggers of this campus.  I’m going to beat the skin off your ass, I’m going to drag you up into the mountains.  Somebody always asking, report it report it, speak up speak up we cant tell, well this is this time, this is it right now, this is life or death.

JIMMY:

What exactly happened?

GIRL:

Outside Beaver Hall someone was screaming outside, outside the window racial epithets.  What he said was, I don’t know if he was screaming at someone in particular but he said, he called out “fucking nigger” and then he was talking about lynching someone.

GUY:

They can’t give out a lot of details because they are still investigating it.

JIMMY:

Yeah… right.

GUY:

They are just posting this incase anyone has any tips.

JIMMY:

More information.

GUY:

In case anyone has any information.

JIMMY:

OK.

GUY:

All right, I’ll go check the facts.

JIMMY:

Alright, thanks.

BRIDGET:
Krystle.

KRYSTLE:

Yeah

BRIDGET:

Alright, I cant -- one thing that’s really lacking in the story is context about the racial climate.  There’s really no background.  We need this information for this story.

KRYSTLE:

Okay.

BRIDGET:

Because right now, again, it’s again the stacked quotes.

KRYSTLE:

Right.  I know.  I’m sorry.  I asked him to come down here, and as you can see like, he’s not here.

BRIDGET:

Go through whomever.

KRYSTLE:

Yeah, I know.  Don’t you have class, because–

BRIDGET:

I’m skipping.

KRYSTLE:

Well, I have to go, because I need to hand something in.  I will ask him to come down here, so you can work on it.

BRIDGET:

[sighs] o I’m really upset, Jimmy.  

JIMMY:

Yeah.

BRIDGET:

There’s nothing.  No background, no context about the racial climate in the last five years, which is really important.

BRIDGET:

I mean it makes the story.

JIMMY:

Yeah he cant be on the story tomorrow.

BRIDGET:

No, but keep in mind here that the village and the whole racial climate is a very important part, its why people are so upset saying the climate hasn’t changed.   So I guess Im gonna be working on this.

0:22:00 – 0:22:30

[Fall breather]

KAYUR:

Let’s play who’s a conservative and who’s a hippy.  

GIRL:

It’s not that hard to tell.

KAYUR:

Alright, here we go: conservative, hippy, hippy, hippy, hippy, conservative, conservative, conservative.  If you’re wearing a hat, you’re probably a conservative.  If it’s a funny hat, then you’re definitely a hippy.

[bell sounds]

GUY:

Ok, we’re going to have a nice, clean debate tonight fellas.  No comments about each other’s mothers and no shots below the belt.  Let’s shake hands, and get to our corners.  

GUY:

We know today Saddam Hussein funded terrorism, he was a terrorist, he harbored terrorism.  Al-Quaeda’s number three guy Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war.

GUY:

We never had enough troops in Iraq and the reason why we never had the troops in Iraq was because we didn’t have the coalition we were promised.

GUY:

Right now it’s not terrorists attacking America.  It’s Freedom Fighters, Iraqi freedom fighters attacking the Imperialistic American army.  That’s the issue.  I disagree with the war in Iraq.  We shouldn’t be there in the first place.

KAYUR:

Hi, my name is Kayur Patel, from the Daily Collegian, can I ask you a few questions?

Guy:

Yeah, sure.

KAYUR:

The conservative party in general, the conservative has labeled people as unpatriotic who don’t support the war.  Do you think that the American people, do you think that is what America is looking for?

GUY:

These people turn on CNN, and they see all these people, they see a protestor, that’s what happened in Vietnam, you know they saw these protesters and they ask, “do they hate us, do they hate us in the war?” Troops get demoralized.

KAYUR:

Obviously we’re going to have the lead.  What did we see as the most important part?  You said you got two people who were more confused, and I got people who said they wouldn’t change their mind for voting.

GIRL:

So, maybe the point of this was how

KAYUR:

--like how it failed.  

GIRL:

Yeah.

KAYUR:

See, you’ve got to differentiate between the PR stuff and what actually happened.

GIRL:

Did you check out Jimmy’s door by any chance?

KAYUR:

I know, like what the hell is that?

GIRL:

Why?

KAYUR:

You guys think I did a good job?

GIRL:

Yeah. You really committed yourself. You stayed like really late, and followed through.  With all this stuff you’re doing with your anonymous caller you know is really, is really pulling through for us so.  I just wanted to make sure you saw it.  I didn’t know if you saw it.

KAYUR:

Thanks a lot.  Awwww

GIRL:

Does it make you feel good?

KAYUR:

Does it make you feel good that your first candidate.

0:25:00 – 0:25:30

GIRL:

Let me tell you, I’m so proud of you, so proud.

STEVE: 

Well…Rutgers bars student journalist from digging into campus issues.  Administrators at the state university have decreed that on campus topics are off limits to the school’s investigative journalism class.

JENNY:

Wait, that is illegal.

STEVE:

Mostly he said that the decision was to give journalist the most real world approach as possible.  Getting them off campus and into town halls and other places. 

JENNY:

So a chairman of a journalism and mass media department said that, he should not be in charge of journalism, that is horrible. He is basically saying because the issue is too sensitive and is ruffling too many feathers that we back away.  That is never what you do as a journalist!

GUY:

This idea of treating your subjects delicately to get more access to get the next interview that’s what really hurts our coverage and hinders our coverage.

JENNY:

But I don’t think it is the players that are necessarily the problem here.  It is sports information. Like if they read something in the paper that they don’t like they will just cut off our access.  Whether the player was mad about it or not they will just say no, you cant have that one on one interview and because they control so much of our access to the team it makes it a lot harder for us.

LAURA:

Has your university newspaper ever had a meeting to discuss 

how a particular sexual assault case should be covered?

GUY:

Um, no

LAURA:

Does your newspaper have a policy on sources for rape or sexual assault stories?

GUY:
Um, certainly not a written policy.

LAURA:

Okay, as a student journalist, do you believe the news media portrays rape accurately?

GUY:

I think sometimes, the news media will treat it too casually you know they wont talk about the serious effects it can have on a victim.

LAURA:

Alright, well congratulations you are done.

GUY:

Yeah, thank you very much.

LAURA:

I am a senior writer on the features staff but also I am a journalism and women studies major so one of my requirements to graduate is a thesis and I’m conducted interviews with reporters with big ten universities to get an idea of how they are writing about sexual assault how they are being trained at college campuses one in four women are raped.

JIMMY:
Close the door.  So uh, on Friday, four people from black caucus came in to yell at me for about forty-five minutes and basically they’re like unhappy about stuff in our editorials and you guys don’t know what the fuck you are doing with anything.

JIMMY:

Um, the story on Wednesday, where is it, they said and I questioned this originally because it was suppose to be a news

 conference and here we called it a rally through out the story and that was one of the first things they said, “no this was not a rally it was a news conference.” Another thing they pointed out though and it was something that I talked to you about and we are doing it with stories too and we should probably stop, is that we are saying alleged a lot and in here, in this editorial we actually originally questioned, it made it sound like we originally questioned it that these things actually happened.

BRENT:
Until we have tangible proof.

JIMMY:

Yeah but if there is a theft we don’t say that there thing was allegedly stolen we say police said it was stolen.  There are a lot of other little things too, I was just like, No, im sorry you cant do that.  

BRIDGET:
Like what?

JIMMY:

Just stuff about like parts of quotes that weren’t cut out or we didn’t clarify everything I’m like you know we only have a certain amount of space we cant publish every little thing you say.

TEACHER:

We have always struggled with having a more diverse newsroom, its just a huge problem for the national media as well. Its difficult to recruit African Americans to schools of journalism because I don’t think really that newspapers cover African American communities very well.  If the newspaper industry covered issues that are important to the black community…

 African Americans would want to read newspapers more and they would want to become journalists.  This is really a problem across the industry.

GUY:

What we wanted to talk about.  We’d had a conversation well black caucus, black caucus had had a conversation with Jim a couple weeks ago. Just talking about some of the reports that we have seen some of the opinions and our concern, and we

 wanted to find a way to be constructive with it and not just yelling at each other.  So I think first off we had some questions about how you choose someone to be on your diversity beat?

JIMMY:

Uh, we just choose them based on their interest.  Some people are interested in covering diversity.  Right now we have 3 junior reporters covering the diversity beat.

GUY:

It is a concern that junior reporters or whoever may not be prepared to write about these issues.  What training is available to collegian reporters or editors?  Is there any do you guys do you guys do diversity training?

JIMMY:

No, part of why you might be asking this I don’t know if you guys have become frustrated because the reporters coming don’t know much about the history and you do because you have been working with these groups and get involved.

GUY:

It is not even necessarily the history but would you hire an arts reporter who doesn’t have any history in arts and has to speak about paintings--

JENNETTE:

My concern is do you feel that reporters have asked insensitive questions or inaccurate questions or you know questions that lead you to believe that we do need diversity training?

GUY:

Not labeling the press conference the way it should be, it’s a press conference, its not a rally, its easy to see that as a basic mistake but its also easy to see that as you see 15 black people in a room and you assume we are all rallying. 86% of white students that come to Penn Sstate have very little experience with students of color before they come to Penn State and I have to believe that those statistics carry over to the white students that are here at the Collegian.

BRIDGET:

Can I just ask one question? I’m just curious as to -- do you guys talk about joining the Collegian?

GUY:

Yeah, I think increasing diversity in the Collegian is a good thing but it need to be another issue.  The fact is that you don’t have to be black to understand that some things are just wrong.  If the collegian went to issues wishing to be more responsive to the student body that you do shape opinions of it needs to be talked about, and the editors need to have this diversity training. Not just this, they need to have a lot of diversity training, so these problems don’t happen.

JIMMY:

But, I’m not sure if it would be beneficial to make it mandatory for everyone here.  There many other interests. There are many other groups, too, besides diversity groups you know all kinds of groups 

GUY:

Would it be possible?

JIMMY:

Possible?

GUY:

To get the entire newsroom to commit to training at a certain point in time?

JIMMY:

Um, with the amount of other things we have to deal with, probably not.

JIMMY:

I think I got a few more grey hairs today. I woke up to an email from a copy editor saying that there was a potentially derogatory term in the paper. There’s this photo of this group of black engines and um their playing a card game, so the copy editor thought of the kicker, queen of spades, so the copy editor, what she didn’t know and I didn’t know until I got the email that spades is a derogatory term for black people because I’ve never heard that before.  And one of our staff members noticed it right after they sent it to press but it was too late to change it.

GUY:

No one really seems to take notice that there are problems on this campus we are invisible here, we are an invisible mass.  

And don’t rely on the media in this area to do anything about it. Yeah, the Daily Collegian and all these other organizations
may be here now but by next week they will be gone covering IFC USG or whatever and everything else that has nothing to do with the black community or any other diverse communities at Penn State because unless we are singing or dancing we are not going to be represented in the media here in state college fairly and accurately enough to get our voices heard.

[applause]

JIMMY:

It is really rough here at the Collegian.  Like our paper is kinda in a slump right now.  This sucks.  And circulation is still down a lot from last semester and we still need to think about circulation, at least I do.  According to our general manager this is the lowest he has seen circulation since he has been here, which is 3 decades I think.  It’s kinda dangerous I think because you don’t know at what point that number will bottom out.

JENNY:

Inside the media room it’s a complete zoo.   ABC, ESPN.  Tons of people descend on this little press box in the middle in central Pennsylvania.

Coach:

The answer is that I’ve never doubted this football team.

JENNY:

And then you have this coach, Joe, and so many people know and love Joe Paterno.  I guess it’s a little stressful, because no matter what Penn State does, it will be in the national spot light.  The program is very guarded.  It’s almost as though there’s a wall built up and information isn’t supposed to get out. The players are college students just like us but our access to them is limited to the media room after games.  It’s such a limited amount of time that if you don’t get what you need, then you’re screwed.  You may be able to write a story that you need to write.  That’s like the worst part.

KAYUR: Well, is there anyone lese in the media relations department I can talk to?   Do you have anything to add to that like anything?  No?  I guess theres no real response to that do  you have any response to that?  Like is he around.  

Yeah the phone just kept on ringing.  

Like the President’s office and the P.R. office and I cannot access them at all. I’ll try to call them, and constantly hit brick wall after brick wall.  No, were not going to give you any information.  No, we’re not going to give you any information.  And they read off a press release, and that’s my story.  A rewritten press release.

KAYUR:

This is what I want to talk to you about.  

JENNETTE:

What.

KAYUR:

We have such a hard time getting to Spanier that you can’t get a phone interview.  Forget about a face to face unless you see him at an event. So I was thinking I want to compare that to how accessible other Penn State presidents were.

JENNETTE:

This sounds like a really difficult story, um…. 

KAYUR:

I want to try out a first person piece.  Like I would make a story up like some education or some tuition story or something like that, that I would try to get to him through about you know what I mean?

JENNETTE:

It’s kinda iffy though. Campus doesn’t really lend itself to things like that.  Do you know what I mean?  It is really difficult to do things like that.  Capiche?

KAYUR:

Capiche.  I don’t speak Italian. 

JENNETTE:

I don’t either.

KAYUR:

I thought that story would be a good way to serve the students better by telling them how inaccessible this administration and people who are in charge of everything 

are.  But I think the reason why that got shot down is because everyone was kind of scared of that. The whole idea of reporting on the fact that we cant report is, is, you know, like exposing yourself, showing exactly how we work.  I don’t think the editors wanted that to happen.

WOMAN:

Hi everyone thanks for being here, we are here tonight to protest sexual violence and violence against women in general.  Sexual assault happens every 2.5 minutes in our country is extremely alarming. For college women in particular sexual assault is a serious threat.

WOMAN:

A lot of students come to me and say, what can I do, I want to help.  I want to be part of helping what can I do.  I want to say to every single person here that changes happen with individuals people standing up and demanding that changes happen.

LAURA:

It’s an epidemic at Penn State and yet we are not really covering it.  I would really like to write an article about sexual assault. This is domestic violence awareness month. So I would like to write something along the lines of a staff column.  Would that work for you at all?

GUY:
Are you involved with any groups about domestic violence?

LAURA:

Yeah that’s the only problem, cause technically I am.

GUY:

That’s the only thing ‘Id worry about.

GIRL:  It’s just, I have an interest in women studies and I have an interest in journalism and many times for me I feel like I am conflicting with myself.  Like what gives me my ability to write is my experiences and I’m not suppose to have them.

GUY:

It’s kind of a hard thing but because of the accusation of editorial bias we’d ruin our credibility.

JENNY:

So I decided to I wanted to do a feature story on Alan Zemitis, one of the cornerbacks on the team.  I approached the sports information director about 4 weeks before the story could’ve appeared in the magazine.  I followed up at press conference, and say, “Is that possible to get that interview?”  The whole time he’s like, “Yeah, we can set it up, don’t worry about it.”  I waited and I waited and I called and followed up.  I didn’t get a response and Alan Zemitis was at that Purdue game press conference.  And I was thinking, he’s standing right there.  I was running out of time and I had no other options, so I just went up to him one day and I said, Can I ask you a question?  I want to a story about you and your family.  Could I have your phone number, so I can call you?  He gave me his cell phone number. I tried to do the right thing, how they want us to do, and go through Sports Information.  An dI gave them a month, and it didn’t happen. I said, did he ever mention to you that I wanted an interview and he’s like, no I knew nothing about it. And I was like, Great.

STEVE:

I feel like with Penn State Football, it’s jus like us versus them a lot of time.  You have to hound them to get the stories out.  You have to hound them to say what’s really going on.  If you had more direct access, if you couldtalk to them on ore of a personal level if they could see you more than as just a reporter, then I feel it would be easier to cover the beat accurately.

[WINTER BREATHER]

BRENT:

I guess we are journalist so you have to call them like you see them.

GIRL:

That’s funny.

BRENT:

I don’t have letters, I don’t have letters, I have letter.  I don’t even have this one confirmed yet. 

BRIDGET:

I feel like nobody cares.

BRENT:

 Oh, well. 

BRENT:

Oh and I got a letter to the editor from Ivanna Humpalot.  

GIRL:

If we can lets verify facts and call her cell phone.

BRENT:

I know she will confirm it, in fact I think I will do that now.

BRENT:

Hi this is Brent, I’m the opinion editor at The Daily Collegian, I just wanted to call and confirm that you sent a letter to the editor concerning the whole in my crotch.  If you could please give me a call back at 865-1828 that would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you, bye.

GIRL:

[laughing] We were spooning, but then we were making out or whatever.  He was like, I just want to let you know that I don’t want a relationship or anything right now.  I was like, most seniors don’t.  He was like, no, I just don’t want a relationship with I was like, oh yeah?  Awesome, I’m going to leave now.

KRYSTLE:

I’m going to go buy a noose now. What the hell is that?

GIRL:

He was like, but you can stay over if you’d like.  I was like, no.  I’m going to go.  Thanks though.  You have a good night.  I was just like, WTF, you know?  I don’t know.  I wrote a column about it, do you want to hear it?

KRYSTLE:

Yeah.

KRYSTLE:

OK.  So Ali and I have this really good idea.  We were like, the paper is boring.  We need to think of something people are interested in and what are students interested in?  Like sex. 

So we thought, We should really do some sort of dating column.  The whole page should be dedicated to relationship 

issues, dating issues in State College.  Like New York Times, USA Today all the major newspapers are trying that too, like bringing in an 18 to 25 year old demographic.  So we thought we’d pitch this to the board of editors and a lot of people aren’t into it.

BRIDGET:

Its what a lot of newspapers think young adults want to read.  We don’t want news we just want gossip on who is with who and who is doing what, and hook ups and celebrity gossip and what kind of pants are in this fall.  Instead of things that actually matter.

KRYSTLE:

People want to be entertained that’s why our whole outlook down here needs to change.  We need to have more entertaining leads.  We need to have quicker stories, we need to have stories that are very readable instead of having all the facts at the top, you know make them so people have to read them till the end.  It’s just, people want news but they don’t want to be bored when they get it.

JIMMY:

The main thing we’re going to talk about is that our circulation is down a lot.  A lot more than before. This semester it’s hovering around 14,500, which is really bad.  So we just have to try harder, I guess to get readers in different ways.  One I want to do right now is make a list of priorities for us to think about.  Basically, what people are interested in, what we’re interested in, and what students are interested in reading about?  So just throw out some things people like to read about.

KRYSTLE:

I’d like to see more done about the nightlife on weekends.  If we could have someone follow someone around to the bar.

JIMMY:

What else?

GIRL:

I think we have to make it a point depending on how hard the news is to put a person in the first graph and make it a really personalized story

GIRL:

I think like quirky news.  Whats been on the top 20 of our 

website.  The guy that had sex with the horse, obviously you cant make that stuff happen but its like the weird off beat news that a lot of people like to read about.

JIMMY:

OK good.  Now Ali and Krystle are going to present their idea for a relationship, sex in the SC kind type, kind of thing.

GIRL:

Basically what it is, I don’t know if all of you know about the column I wrote in which I had a pseudo date or at least I thought it was a date on a Friday night, and it ended up that the guy just wanted to hook up.  It’s just about if it’s become htis get drunk and hook up society.

KRYSTLE:

So we got an overwhelming response, so we kinda evolved the idea from just us writing this column once a week into maybe making this a little bigger, and to maybe dedicating a whole page of our paper to it a week.  We’ve been throwing the idea around with our roommates and friends, and they think, in their opinion, would make people pick up the paper.  Which is obviously what we’re trying to do… draw people back.

[DATING COLUMN MONTAGE]

JIMMY:

Just between the three of us, our circulation is still pretty low.  

BRIDGET:

Like how Low?

JIMMY:

It’s at about the same as last week; yesterdays was fifteen five or something like that.

BRIDGET:

That’s not good.

BRENT:

I remember when it was it was getting over 20000 on a fairly 

consistent basis.

BRIDGET:

What is the problem?  Are we just not writing stuff that people care about? I guess that is part of it. 

JIMMY:

It’s the same as it was last semester.

BRIDGET:

Yeah, nothing is different.

JIMMY:

Maybe it’s just too cold.

BRIDGET:

Maybe their fingers are frozen.  I don’t know.

BRENT:

I don’t know what the cause is, but I know what the effect is.

BRENT:

How strong do you want it, Jimmy? 

JIMMY:

Uh, not as strong as you use it.

BRENT:

No, I mixed up a weak one.

JIMMY:

Oh, make it a relatively weak.

BRENT:

That’s a weak one.

JIMMY:

I don’t know if we are to blame.  

BRIDGET:

I’m too pessimistic.  It’s been a long day.  I do feel like partially it’s our fault.

JIMMY:

There’s not that much news to talk about.  That’s a huge part 

of it.

BRENT:

I know

BRIDGET:

We should be out finding the stories.  I feel like when we were reporters, like I wanted to report and cover the shit out of things.  I always feel like it’s my fault when things don’t get covered well.

JIMMY:

Just stop it.  Stop it.

BRENT:

She doesn’t respond well to that.  

BRIDGET:

I really, really want to see investigative hard news stories.

BRENT:

At this point, as far as content goes.

BRIDGET:

I know its dry.

BRENT:

Well, no if there is not something in it for the college student I think we are pretty damn screwed.

BRIDGET:

Its 4 o’clock and sunny guys, we had all weekend.  Alright, lets get a move on guys.  Sports can you update for me.

And Campus, where is the rest of your stuff.

GIRL:

We’re working on it.

BRIDGET:

Well, we better be working on it, because it’s quarter after four and we’re running out of news stories.  And when I get bored, I get bitchy and you don’t want me to be bitchy.  No excuses.  I read that a long time ago.

If you people can’t deal with it, tough shit.

LAURA:

If we were doing a better job reflecting the community than circulation would be up.  They are not holding up their social responsibility to make people aware of the issues going on.

GIRL:

Did you see today, on the second page, that a woman was sexually assaulted?

LAURA:

I didn’t read the briefs.

GIRL:

Yeah, well that’s the thing; it was only in the briefs.  It actually said in the briefs that they were investigating it as a rape not a sexual assault.  But that wasn’t on the front page because it was oh an acquaintance.

LAURA:

I remember this one incidence where one of the girls was talking about how sexual assualt is a really huge problem in the campus, was really pissed off, that how she could be walking down the street on a Saturday night, like…

GIRL:

Catcalls?

LAURA:

Yeah! Catcalls. Heckling.  You’re a bitch. Why are you looking at me?  Why aren’t you looking at me? And so this is obviously something that’s bothering people in the Collegian office, and it must mean it’s affecting a lot more people outside and I was like why can’t we write an article about the atmosphere around here.

GIRL:

You told me about this.

LAURA:

Yeah, she said it’s just the way it is.  And that was kind of depressing.

JENNY:

All right Mike, take me around your room.

GUY:

Ok, I’m pretty much a DVD guy.

JENNY:

That’s a lot of hand lotion there Mike.

GUY:

This is really empty.  I just haven’t thrown it away yet.

JENNY:

What’s with the bear on the TV?  It’s cute.

GUY:

My mom bought me that, man. I just got to keep it there for inspiration.  

JENNY:

Do you do your homework here or do you go elsewhere?

GUY:

I try to go other places to do homework. When I’m not in school I want to totally chill out.  There’s no desk in here.

JENNY:

Yeah, there’s no computer, no desk in here.

0:52:00 – 0:52:30

GUY:

No nothing.  When we’re here, we want to be at home. This is my drink of choice, Remy Martin.  My alarm clock when I have to wake up early in the morning.  As you can see it’s set for 6:15.  I call this cranberry, see what I’m saying.  My whole room wasn’t this color it was completely -- I’m all neutral colors, blacks, whites, and grays but I hit it off with this color right here because this is gonna be the color of my first car.

JENNY:

What kind of car do you want?

GUY:

Range Rover.

JENNY:

A cranberry Range Rover!

JENNY:

So what’s this painting?

GUY:

The painting?

JENNY:

Did you do that?  Oh cool, tell me about it.

GUY:

To the left corner you have Biggie Smalls, to the right you have Tupac, to the right you have Martin Luther Jr., and to the bottom right you have Malcolm X all four of them are prophets of my whole being.  In the middle you have the United States painted black and white.

JENNY:

Why black and white?

GUY:

Because the American dream is not what it seems to be, its really black and white, it is that simple of a concept and the brain in the middle with the chains I had done is to symbolize our society holding each 4 dudes back because neither of them got to go to their full potentials.

JENNY:

We just did part one of my cribs series.  These are 3 very high profile players. A lot of people want to know how they live, what they did with their time.  This is kind of a glimpse into that.  I had fun going around the sports information department.  And, I think this is an example of that.  I’ve learned you have to create your own access. And the access they give us, and is not good.  This is not sanctioned, and if they knew about this, I’d probably be getting into trouble.

JENNETTE:

Who told you it was the second contract?

KAYUR:

It was Megan Green.

JENNETTE:

What did it say explicitly about the video cameras?

KAYUR:

I don’t know.

JENNETTE:

That’s pretty important.  And Bridget needs it right now.  You come in a bit little later, after deadline, and then the stories need work or we need to call additional sources. And this is the type of thing that if it had been earlier, we really could have pushed for it to be on the front. But because she hasn’t read it, it makes it that much more difficult.  And the chances of it going on front, when this is a big story, because this contract has been finalized, you know it just diminishes and makes life more difficult.

KAYUR:

I had this hard ass week, and now I’m getting all this shit how I don’t come in on time. And I don’t get stuff done on deadline.  Last week was just the busiest week of my life.  I just had so much pressure on me.  I got no sleep. And this weekend, I just had to make up for that to be a normal person.  Rather tahn just this crazed manic.  No matter what, I’m still a college student, you know?

LAURA:

I mean no wonder people aren’t picking up the paper, they are not covering the news.  They’re not covering what happened last night or last weekend or the day before that.  There are letters to the editor just pleading: please cover this issue this is something we care about we have thousands of people here.  The worst thing that you can do is to tell the truth poorly and I feel like a lot of times journalism tells the truth poorly.  The real story is the fact that we are not covering the real story.

LAURA:

So, how is circulation going?

JIMMY:

The same.

LAURA:

I wish that we could just see some more substance in our 

articles that we produce.

JIMMY:

What do you mean by that?

LAURA:

That concerned readers really want to see something that is substantive about a real issue that effects so many women and men on this campus.  If we don’t than our circulation goes down and things like that. So, I’m just wondering if we’re going to see more of an accurate reflection of the environment which Penn State students are living in.  Causef it’s our job to reflect this reality and what’s going on in our community, we’re not doing it.

JIMMY:

Can you imagine if we did print a full story every time there was a sexual assault?  That’d be once or twice a week.

LAURA:

Yeah what does that tell you right there?

JIMMY:

Yeah

LAURA:

It’s a huge problem.

JIMMY:

It’s not like we get the cops’ log from the police, and we see sexual assault and, “oh, another one of those,” and don’t report it.  We put it in the paper.  We put it into a brief with a headline, you know?

LAURA:

But if sexual assault is relegated to small briefs, it’s also relegated in our minds and society that’s something that’s not as important. That it happens everyday.  That’s not news worthy.

JIMMY:

It’s important, but it’s not news worthy.

JIMMY:

Oour circulation has dropped even more, so I don’t know...  

TEACHER:

This thing about the pedestrian, the women getting hit by the bus.  You could’ve actually made this into a good story.  Like yesterday’s lead story there were a lot of people you could’ve called to extend the story to make it stronger.  It’s still an important story.  I think that anything to do with pedestrians getting hit.

JIMMY:

I’m just worried that doing something like that would be a slippery slop because people get hit by cars all the time, so if we ran a story like that and the next day someone got hit by a car but wasn’t seriously injured, we’d have to make that into, you know, say another student hit by a car.  And the next day and the next day…  Where it’s like every day we’re saying, “Someone hit by a car.”  

TEACHER:

And then eventually something happens.  Isn’t that what newspapers do?  If you don’t cover it, what happens to society?  People keep on getting hit.  But if you at least cover it and cover it, maybe eventually someone will do something.  I guess I wouldn’t let it just die.

JIMMY:

 If there’s something always going on, there doesn’t seem to be a news peg there to write the story.  

TEACHER:

Well, Sometimes you live in communities where, like in Philadelphia, people get shot all the time. And then I would still cover it.  You know what I mean, like… You know how that is?

BRIDGET:

Yeah.

TEACHER:

I mean I think things may happen all the time, but that doesn’t mean we don’t cover it.  And we don’t try and do as much as we can with it.  I want you to think about it.

KRYSTLE:
Someone wrote a ridiculous letter about… Cause you know how we ran the picture with the two gay couples kissing.  He’s like I’m 

really glad the Collegian is choosing to represent “real” people.  All this crap, and calling then queers and stuff.

GIRL:

Thank you Daily Collegian for writing such a wonderful front page yesterday.  There is nothing I look forward to more than seeing a bunch of queers kissing in on the front page.  How about publishing pictures and stories about real people that actually matter instead of a group of people who are disgusting and pathetic.  Wow, that’s…

BRENT:

Yeah.

GIRL:

So they’re not real people?

BRENT:

They must be figments of peoples’ imaginations, I guess.

GIRL:

Are you gong to put that in?

BRENT:

Fucking right, I am.

GIRL:

It is like publishing a Klan letter like if someone from the Ku Klux Klan were to send you a letter would that get published? Isnt that just like propaganda?

BRENT:

The racist remarks would be taken out, and I would publish it.

KRYSTLE:

Is there any other content in that letter besides calling people derogatory names and disgusting?

GIRL:

There needs to be something more to a letter than just someone bashing somebody else.

BRENT:

The letters to the editor of this newspaper are a public forum.

KRYSTLE:

Like I understand why you want to run the letter, and like, I see your point but like at the same time I really don’t think you’d run something that called a black person the “N” word.

BRENT:

See that’s something we’re going to need to work out.  I don’t know if we’re going to run the word queer.

GIRL:

Fuck queer.  Queer’s not a derogatory term.

BRENT:

We have an environment here where people want to change attitudes.  All of the stuff the black caucus does that LGBTA does, what the hell did you think the rally on the steps was about?  It’s about addressing the attitudes of negativity towards this.  And I think it is important to note that, look, they are already fucking here, they are still out there.

GIRL:

I‘m really, I’m afraid of what’s going to come after it.  Cause  I feel like people are just going to go back and forth, and its adding fuel to the fire.

BRENT:

Well wait until people write in about it.  See how big of an issue it gets.

CHANNEL 6 NEWS:

ANNOUNCER:

A front-page paper on the front of Penn State’s newspaper of a lesbian and gay couple kissing has caused quite a stir throughout the State College community.  

ANNOUNCER:

First came the kiss, then the letter to the Collegian criticizing that kiss, and now the reaction from the gay and lesbian support group.

GIRL:

This letter to the editor has been the most blatant hate speech I have experienced in the entire time I have been here.

GIRL:

The entire Penn State community has come together to say that this is just not acceptable behavior and tt’s not going to happen.

GUY:

Those are some of the most hateful words I have ever read.  To be told my life does not matter, to be told I am not important, to be told that my very being is disgusting and pathetic, is something I cannot and will not stand for.

GIRL:

We ask for an apology from those parties who wrote the letter.  And again while the Allies are thankful for the Collegian covered our story of the kiss-in, we would like to know why this hateful letter was published.

JIMMY:

Yeah this is pretty big.  We got over a 100 letters today, probably over a 150 actually.  Do you think this will fit in your story at all

Guy: I’m gonna make sure when we design the pages we have more room.  

JIMMY:

It’s just amazing what kind of impact you can have on the community, just by one thing you decide to publish. Everyone was talking about it.  It was on all the radio stations on Friday.  And people in their Art History classes are talking about it for 15 minutes at the beginning of class you know?  Which is pretty crazy.  This is probably the biggest thing that has involved us in awhile.

[SPRING BREATHER]

KAYUR:

I’m just burned out I’m frustrated

JENNETTE:

I know that admin is difficult.

KAYUR:

So, you understand…

JENNETTE:

I understand.

KAYUR:

Just to get to Spanier, you have to go through Bill.  Then you have to go through his secretary, and their secretaries, and his secretaries’ secretaries.  I do accept responsibility for not having the administration beat covered correctly, but just to get any information about what’s going on, like you, I found it impossible.

JENNETTE:

That’s part of…There are going to be days when you leave here, and you feel like you need to beat your head off the wall.  Like you’re never coming back.  You hate this place.  You’re going just have to dig.  It comes down to you doing what you need to do, and trying your best to get the stories.

JENNY:

I said I’m not trying to go around Sports Information.  And he cut me off, and said, Jenny, that’s not how we do things around here. The last thing I want is him telling them, don’t talk to Jenny.  If that happens, I’m done.  It really makes me really upset.  I was thinking about it all last night.  I haven’t slept in 4 hours, because I had exams.  Just cause like it justbothers me.  I’m just trying to do my job.  And they try to kill it- It’s a catch 22, if we do it their way, we don’t do our job. If we do it our way, we get prevented from doing our job and it’s like --

GUY:

Just be proud you’re a journalist. And everyone else on this beat is a fucking hack. 

GUY:

Yeah, you’re really getting the stories, everyone else is--

JENNY:
But am I really getting the real stories?  Not really.

GUY:

I seriously think it’s like being a dissident in Soviet era Russia.  Seriously, like, if there is only one of you, they can sweep you under the rug and not make a big deal about it.  And you don’t have the access anymore, and that’s it.

GUY:

You’re doing the best you can.

JENNY: That just sucks.  You know? The minute he gets it in their head that they cant talk to me that they’ll have sanctions imposed on them.  No player on that team is going to risk anything to talk to a reporter it doesn’t matter how good of a relationship I have with them.

TEACHER:

First of all, you seem kind of upset about it. And I wouldn’t be upset, what are you getting out of that relationship? Rules are a contract between a source and a reporter and if you are not getting anything out of the contract then why should you enter into the contract.

JENNY:

That is something that I should definitely have said. That is something I should of said. I couldn’t think quickly enough obviously, it put me on the spot a lot but yeah you’re right.

TEACHER:

If they come down on the football players, you shouldn’t be talking to Jenny, what have we lost?  What have we lost? Because the rules are they have to, no player can talk to you, so if you play by the rules nobody can talk to you.

JENNY:

Right but they are still talking to me right now and if -- 

TEACHER:

Play it out as long as you can. You knew this ride was going to end, you knew that you would be talking to players and sooner or later it would catch up to you and it caught up to you.

JIMMY: Everyone is still talking about how we published the letter.  I’m writing a column for tomorrow’s paper explaining why we published it

JENNETTE:

I think to blame the Collegian is an error in judgment.  I mean were doing our job addressing an issue and showing there is so much work to be done.

BRIDGET:

Yeah I think its an important part of the dialog to have speech 

like that.  I hate it and I absolutely hate the fact there are people that think that way but there are.

GIRL: You have to have both sides

BRIDGET:

Right we can’t ignore the fact that there are still a lot of people who feel this way. And I feel like state college is a lot more liberal.  I  mean, go back home to my high school, I guarantee you, our administration kicked people out because they were gay.  Catholic high school, girls were banned from being lesbians.  We live in a bubble sometimes

JIMMY:

But I didn’t know if there was anything you wanted to say about how this shows about the university climate here.

BRIDGET:

That’s what I would –

JENNETTE:

Yeah like there were those racial slurs outside of Beaver Hall.  The Black Caucus case shows clearly were not a tolerant climate.

BRIDGET: Were not as inclusive a community as we wanna think.

JENNETE: I mean I think this is a serious enough issue we got 150 to 200 responses now it’s our opportunity to take it and run with it and do some good, yeah.

BRIDGET: It’s even more important to speak out.

JENNETTE:

I say like  lets continue it, lets do our job.

JIMMY:

So lets do our job.

[music]

GUY:

Editor and chief of student newspaper the Daily Collegian here at Penn State, Mr. James Young.  Welcome back to the program.

JIMMY: 

Thank you

GUY:

Many people have criticized you as playing up to the political agenda, or the social agenda if you will, of the folks who were putting on that event.

JIMMY: Part of our job is to document what’s happening here at Penn State and you could say the opinion page is to report and document all the opinions that are going on at Penn State right now.

GUY:

To any extent what so ever, do you feel that the Collegian played a role in perpetuating or exacerbating what has unfolded into its own pages as the controversy?

JIMMY:

In a way we did, which was kind of unfortunate. In terms of any controversial decision we make, we have to decide whether or not something is going to harm or help someone.  Obviously with the printing the Kavolchick letter, it did harm members of the LGBT community in terms of they were hurt by his language, but this letter did the LGBT community a favor because all the things that are happening now wouldn’t be happening.  Intolerance would continue to fester.  And, there would be no public debate like we’re having now.  I mean right now, Allies are having a town hall meeting tomorrow night as I know, and um, at their press conference last week, they discussed things they wanted the university to do and more sensitivity training.  Things like that.  All these changes wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t print the photo or didn‘t print the letter.

GUY: So in retrospect you’re saying this was a good thing.

JIMMY: Yes.

[Newspaper bins montage]

JIMMY:

So, everybody… Last week actually, I don’t know if I told you guys but I looked at the circulation.  And last Monday it was

 19,700.

[applause]

which is by far more than any day this year, and probably tops almost any day last year too.  Which is incredible.  It wasn’t that high rest of the week, but we kept it in the 18000’s through Friday.  Ever since last Thursday when we ran the letter, people have been talking about stuff that’s in our paper. In all classes, this stuff keeps coming up.  I hear people talking about it.  Teachers are talking about it.  Let’s not let it drop off. Lets use this to our advantage. Tell them how many people were reading our paper last week.  It’s really incredible that we went from the 14000s to the 18000s where we should be.  Ok?  

JIMMY:

From the Associated Collegiate Press, 3^rd place sports story.  That’s really awesome.

JENNY:

It’s exciting.  It’s exciting.

JIMMY:

You know how many stories are written every year? Thousands. Thousands of stories are written every year.

GIRL:

Yay!  Congratulations.

JENNY:

Any time as a writer you have a concept in your head and you find a way to enact that concept, or like put into print. That is an amazing feeling. I proved to myself that if I have an idea, I can make it  happen.  It is just so rewarding.

It is almost like, it kinda empowers you, whatever story I want to do in the future, I can do it.

KAYUR:

Hey, John.  Mind if I talk to you for a couple minutes?

TEACHER:

How about it.  Sit down.

KAYUR:

All right.  

TEACHER:

Shut the door.

KAYUR:

Okay.  

TEACHER:

What’s cooking?

KAYUR:

I’ve been thinking about what to do next year.  And just coming to come and talk with you about it.  See what you think I should explore.  Or what I should explore

TEACHER:

First of all, where are you in your head?  Where are you in terms of journalism?

KAYUR:

Right now, like waiting for a call and writing up a story and all that stuff, is annoying me to no end right now.  I’m really not enjoying it.

TEACHER:

And that’s going to continue.  In the real world when you become a reporter that’s really basically the job.  If people called you back right away it would be a wonderful job.  Everyone would want it.  You know there are some people who aren’t reporters. I’ll tell you,I didn’t like reporting, you know?  I pretty much became the editor, because I knew that’s what I wanted to do.  So are you sure this is what you want to do?

[marching, chanting]

“Out of the dorms, into the streets we wont be raped we wont be beat!”

LAURA:

I really wanted to do a story about a survivor because usually every year we have event coverage but you never get to put a 

true face with the whole trauma and the survivorship and the moving and the healing and all that stuff so.

I’m personally not sure if I’m going to stay in the newsroom.  Its really difficult cause you have to sit out a lot on the sidelines.  But by talking to people, talking with photographers, copy editors, fellow reporters.

LAURA: And I’m really glad that you’re here.  So, thanks for covering this.  Yeah.

GIRL:
Oh thank you, I hope I do a good job.

That’s its own form of activism.  And I think change happens slowly within journalism.  So maybe if we slowly change the people that make up newsrooms you’ll eventually help lead to that bigger picture change.

GIRL:

Jimmy’s got it.

JIMMY:

I’ve never opened a bottle a champagne before

BRENT:

Oh Jesus, duck and cover.

JIMMY:

BRENT, help me with this.

BRENT:

Think I ever opened one of these Goddamn things before? Yeah, I know that.

GUY:

Take that off.  Take that off.  Now twist and pull.  All right, it’s past deadline!

JIMMY:

Every newspaper, I mean, we strive to be perfect.  We strive to have everything accurate in the paper.  You know, to cover the news a best as you can.  But, we make mistakes.  This job, there’s all kinds of problems.  You’re bound to get things wrong.  And it’s just tough to do.  But one good thing is: just like with any newspaper you get to start over every day.  If you screw something up you have a new product to put out 

the next day.

JIMMY: The formal is a formal and we have it right here at t he Days Inn.  Hopefully everyone behaves themselves this evening.  Hopefully no one throws up in a pool or anything else bad.

[music… dancing]

[the printing press]

JIMMY:

I’ll get a little emotional when I see the front page rolling off for the last time.

LAURA [onscreen update]:

Laura Baker is a Communications Director for Virgina 21, a political advocacy group which mobilizes young voters

KAYUR [onscreen update]:

Kayur Patel quit reporting and is The Daily Collegian’s Managing Editor of Design

JENNY [onscreen update]:

Jenny Vrentas is attending The Graduates School of Journalism at Columbia University

Bridget [onscreen update]:

Bridget Smith is the copy editor for Impulse a weekly newspaper marketed to 18-25 year olds.

1:16:30 – 1:17:00

JIMMY [onscreen update]: 

James Young is a police reporter at the Bethlehem, PA Express-Times.

[Credits]