The first painting to get loaned to SMU from the Prado.

I used to round up links for my EIC blog (before I apparently forgot how to post to it). I figure this could be a good thing to do on this blog, since I’m still getting Google Alerts about SMU. I can’t wait for graduation and the day I can turn them off. So without further ado, here’s what you should know in recent SMU news:

Donald Andrew Bess is on trial for the murder of an SMU student in 1984:

• Dallas County death penalty trial delayed after defendant accused of killing SMU student has massive heart attack [Dallas Morning News]
• Defendant’s heart attack delays SMU murder trial [Associated Press]
• Rapist was also SMU student’s killer in ’84 slaying, two testify [Dallas Morning News]
• Dallas County prosecution rests in trial over killing of SMU student in ’84 [Dallas Morning News]

SMU Research is trying to help women practice assertiveness skills with virtual reality so that they can prevent rape (Editor’s note: But what we really need to be doing is teaching people to not rape other people. I mean, that’s the problem with our rape culture. But I digress.): Practicing assertiveness skills on virtual-reality “dates” may help women prevent sexual victimization [SMU Research]

The Meadows Museum announced a three-year partnership with the Prado Museum, which further cements the Meadows Museum’s association with Spanish Art:

• Meadows ties the knot with the Prado [Daily Campus]
• Prado and Meadows Museum announce three-year partnership [SMU Public Affairs]
• Prado and Meadows Museum Announce Three-Year Partnership [Dallas Art News]
• Prado has U.S. alliance [New York Times]

Summer Senate doled out approximately $5,400 to various organizations at their first Summer Senate meeting.

Sports News:

Conference realignment could mean a big shakeup for SMU Athletics. Right now, all we’ve got is speculation.

• How does conference movement affect SMU?_updated with Orsini statement [Dallas Morning News]
• C-USA hires consultant to assist as conference realignment unfolds [Dallas Morning News]

The NCAA sanctioned USC for a host of violations, bringing up memories of the Death Penalty and the death of SMU Football. Naturally. Sometimes I think SMU is the Jennifer Anniston to the NCAA’s sanctions’ Brad Pitt. No matter what the story, we’re going to be brought up:

• NCAA Slaps U. of Southern California With Stiff Penalties in Closely Watched Case [Chronicle of Higher Education]
• USC Football: Sanctions Worst Since SMU Death Penalty? [Bleacher Report]
• USC Trojans: They’re Different From 1980s SMU How, Exactly? [Houston Press]

Former SMU Director of Athletics Jim Copeland dies at the age of 65 from cancer: [SMU Public Affairs]

That's an epic fail.

Just because you never run corrections doesn’t mean you’re never wrong.

I was talking to Craig Flournoy, one of my journalism professors, one day last April when he said something to that effect. The Daily Campus had just run a correction recently, and he was telling me that we, the paper, were doing the right thing by publishing corrections.

And you know what? He’s absolutely right.

By their very nature, humans make a lot of mistakes. We’ve got the sheepish apology and “I’m only human” line down. You’d think journalistic institutions would realize this and admit their erroneous ways. Some do. Others don’t.

In an old post (but worth the read), Scott Rosenberg of MediaBugs.org highlights one of the reasons why corrections are important, focusing on two New York Times corrections of Voxox (originally reported as “Vovox”) and the College of William & Mary (originally printed as “William and Mary College”):

the importance of correcting them lies not in some earth-shattering import to the facts themselves but rather in the bond of trust that is established when a publication is seen to care enough to correct them — and, inversely, the loss of trust that occurs when the publication doesn’t bother.

Remember that, for Joe at Voxox or Sue at William & Mary, the misspelled name isn’t just a tiny fact in a sea of information; it represents that person’s point of maximum contact with the publication. Each time these people think of that newspaper or magazine they’re going to remember, These are the folks who couldn’t even get my name right. Multiply that by all the careless errors that get made in the course of normal journalism and you can get some insight into why public trust in the media has been on a downhill curve for so many years.

Issuing a correction is painful and gives me a queasy stomach. I absolutely hate doing it. Because as a journalist, I’m supposed to get the facts straight. The paper is supposed to get the facts straight. We’re the first draft of history!

Running a correction is something of a Catch-22: Either we admit that we were wrong or we don’t. Admitting mistakes shows our readers that we make mistakes and aren’t fully accurate. Not admitting mistakes shows that a) we’re too stupid to know we made a mistake, b) we don’t care about making mistakes, or c) we don’t want to make ourselves look bad. The only way out of these situations is to admit wrongdoing. To do so otherwise is a disservice to journalism.

The 2009 State of the Media report by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that fewer and fewer Americans trust the media because we’re less accurate. We can’t just pretend the mistake never happened. Why not? Because our readers know if we get something wrong. There’s always going to be at least one guy who reads a story and notices that something’s wrong. And that one guy will inevitably tell someone else about the error. It spreads like a virus. They know we got something wrong, so why should they trust us?

Then there’s the other side of errors: spreading misinformation. Just ask Mark Twain, who is probably one of the most quoted people who ever lived. Or Marie Antoinette, who never did actually say, “Let them eat cake.” If we don’t correct our wrongs, some people might not realize we were wrong. This, I believe, is the single most important reason why we should correct mistakes. Not everyone is a fact-checker. It’s why birthers believe that Obama is not an American citizen (that, and a healthy dose of conspiracy theory). News outlets are supposed to be credible (because we’re all about facts), which means a lot of people take our information and assume its true. Even sometimes when it’s not.

If we don’t correct the information when we know it’s wrong, we’re lying to our readers. We’re intentionally saying the facts don’t matter. And in journalism, that’s akin to blasphemy.

My brief stint as Editor in Chief of The Daily Campus has been wonderful. I set out with a few goals,  and thankfully we accomplished nearly all of them.

This was one of the best semesters we’ve had in quite a while. Our readership is up. Reader discussion on our website, the opinion page and in other places has increased. We redesigned the website (with more changes occurring on the summer). We did more hard-hitting stories about subjects that impact students.

Perhaps the only thing we didn’t do was change our newsroom production flow to a web-first mentality.

While we did break several stories online (more examples here, here, here, here and here), the print product was still first in the hierarchy.

That’s not a change you can make overnight, of course. And I still haven’t figured out how to make a web-first approach work without copy-editing stories to the point of mass redundancy. Hopefully our new EIC, Jessica Huseman, can figure out how to accomplish this goal.

I have great faith in her; she’s already on the ball and gearing up for our summer issues. She’s got next semester’s staff tied up; she’s hired a couple of freshmen apprentices; she’s looked at making changes to the website and the print product’s layout. Also new? A Monday, Wednesday, Friday print schedule. No longer will we have to suffer through a five-day wait betwixt Friday and Tuesday! It’s going to be marvelous.

What’s Next for Me?

I’m going to be a senior staff writer for the DC covering Student Senate (for the most part). I will also be interning at The Dallas Morning News during the fall semester.

Over the summer I will be working an in-depth story for next fall’s DC. It should be extremely interesting. I won’t give away the details, but I will express my appreciation for the IRS. Thank you, government-tax-agency-that-requires-disclosure-from-nonprofits.

You’ll have also noticed that I gave the ole’ blog a fresh new theme. Hope you like it.

The Board of Directors of Student Media Company voted yesterday to continue the suspension of Friday print editions of the paper for the Spring 2010 semester. While we had hoped that we would be able to bring Friday editions back to the newsstands next spring, the economy’s downturn still affects us. Declining advertising revenues have made producing a Friday print edition of The Daily Campus financially unviable.

Disclaimer: I wrote it. And I added a reference to Evita.

The DC suspended the Friday print product at the end of Spring 2009. It was a sad day for me, and I hope the rest of the staff (but truth be told, I can’t quite remember how everyone reacted). We’d been hanging onto the “daily” in our name by publishing four times a week. Then we were down to three.

Would we have to change our name back to the Semi-Weekly Campus? For a while, it seemed plausible to me.

Well, we’re continuing the three-day print schedule. The economy just isn’t in the right place. It’s a shame considering that most college newspapers are fairing pretty well compared to our professional counterparts. After all, our niche has already been established. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Fall 2010 is the magic semester where we can bring Friday issues back.

The good news: our new Web site. The Internet may have caused all the “Print is Dead!” hullabaloo, but we can publish on the Web for free and as often as we’d like.

Now if only we could figure out how to monetize it.

I’m a little speechless.

College Publisher just sent back their version of the mockup we sent them for our new Web site. What you see to the right is a small snapshot of the awesomeness.

We had a couple of goals (well, I did) when this redesign started:

1. It had to be user-friendly
2. It had to be pretty and simple in its design
3. It had to feature our social media prominently
4. We had to get rid of the mash-up of newspapers in the background of our nameplate on the Web site. And the blue background.

I’d say we sufficiently accomplished those goals. I know College Publisher may not be thought of as the best college newspaper CMS, but they’ve been pretty awesome so far with our redesign. We don’t have super tech-savvy staffers (myself included; I couldn’t code to save my life unless it’s basic HTML), so it’s not much of an issue.

Plus, CP will allow us to have a mobile site (they just released it). SMU students are smartphone addicts, and I’m thrilled we’ll be able to accommodate them.

Expect the new site to launch over Winter Break.

It’s not finished, and it’s not up on the Web site yet. But I feel like giving my loyal readers a sneak peek at the crime map that (hopefully) will be up on The DC’s Web site soon. We start back to work on Monday, so keep your fingers crossed.

It’s not a particularly hard thing to do–create a custom Google Map. But I’m excited. Now our readers will be able to pinpoint crimes across campus as the year progresses. Maybe there are some high crime areas? We’ll see. Right now (August 15), the bookstore appears to be in the lead for most crimes. But then again, the map only details the crime logs beginning in August 2009.

This map was created by using open records–something we should strive to maintain. The public has a right to know. Support sunshine laws (PSA is now over).

Twitter | I’ve waxed lyrical about this micro-blogging/social network/whatever site before. If you’re asking why you should join Twitter, I really can’t say. What I can say is that if you join and start doing it, then you’ll understand. Twitter is a great way to spread information around (not just tell the world you ate the best PB&J sandwich in your life). So join, find some followers, and join in the conversation.

Every Saturday Morning | We’ve all heard from pro-lifers about the evils of abortion. But what about the clinic escorts? They wake up early every Saturday morning to lend support to those seeking abortions (for whatever reason) and to help protect women’s reproductive rights. See what’s it’s like on the other side of the protest. Maybe they’ll change your mind about a few things.

Jezebel | You say feminist like it’s a bad thing. This blog bills itself as Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing., but don’t let that fool you. It also deals with such -ism issues as sexism, reproductive rights and sizism. Jezebel promotes the modern feminist idea that women are people and deserve to be treated as such. Come for the content, but stay for the comments. Jezzies (the commenters) aren’t afraid of a good debate or snarky comment. Also, don’t be surprised to see some men included in the regular commenters. I love this blog because it’s insightful. It makes me think, which I feel is never a bad thing.

The Daily Campus | Because, well, I work there.

Spotted: DC Summer Interns | Need a good laugh? Then you’ll enjoy the antics storied in this blog. My favorite entry so far details three interns talking about the birther issue on the metro:

Intern #1 (boy): “Geez, have you guys been getting bombarded by birther phone calls? They put me on phones for an hour yesterday and that was all I heard about.”

Intern #2 (boy): “I dunno—they don’t let me near the phone. Is your boss for it or against it?”

Intern #1: “Against what?”

Intern #2: “The birther issue. My boss is strictly conservative—so he’s pro-life.”

Intern #1: “Oh yeah—mine’s the same way. Totally supports Roe v. Wade.”

Intern #3 (girl): “Yeah, our office has had a lot of visits from the Pink Ladies. I think my boss is in favor of the birther issue too.”

FMyLife | You think your day was bad? Czech out some of these stories. If you’ve ever seen anyone on Facebook or Twitter use “FML,” you know they’re a fan of this Web site.

F*** Yeah! Ryan Gosling | Genius. Absolutely genius.

Mashable | Looking for news about Facebook or Twitter? This news site provides great coverage of anything social networking.

Times are tough these days.

I know you’re all thinking about the economy, swine flu, final exams, Darfur, global warming, etc. etc. I think we could probably go on all day. But there’s something more important that needs to be discussed: former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s bangs.

More specifically, we need to discuss how Mr. Blagojevich’s bangs (and the rest of his body) may be appearing on a reality TV show for NBC called “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!” As ridiculous as it sounds, it’s indeed true.

If the show sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The show is a remake of a British TV show of the same name. ABC had previously tried to remake the show, but that failed in the ratings department.

NBC is determined to create another version (don’t ask me why), and Blagojevich has been asked to be a contestant. A judge ruled that the former governor can’t travel to Costa Rica to film the show alongside the other cast members, but Blagojevich told reporters last week that he is discussing “several potential options” with NBC.

I was pretty much dumbfounded when I heard the news. I really didn’t think it was real – until I did a quick Google search and saw both the Associated Press and Reuters had a story. But then again, we should have realized that the guy was a media whore. Instead of appearing in court for his impeachment trial, Blagojevich instead did the talk-show circuit. Further proof can be seen from this quote taken from a CNN story about it:

Read the rest here.

Besides, who wants to hold up the world? You get bugs on your hand from the Equator. And your head? Talk about cold. Stupid ice caps.

But speaking of SMU, here are some highlights from today:

• The DC broke a story about SAE getting placed on deferred suspension.
• SMU now has it’s own Daily Candy-esque blog, SMU Style.

Also, I finally worked out a plausible schedule for next Fall. Hopefully all my classes will continue to have at least one slot open. I always get screwed in that department. How? It goes by hours, then I suspect alphabetical. I’m a sophomore and and my last name begins with “S.”

And for your enjoyment:

Czech out @thedailycampus.