BGNews interviews BG Students-BG FB game or BlackSwamp Fest?

[1987alum]

Transfer:

Since my time at BG, I've critiqued dozens and dozens of newspapers - both college and "professional." While I have a deep resentment toward the way I see the J-school floundering - IMHO - I can say that you'd be surprised at how well The News stacked up and stacks up against what I've seen. If you want to see the best, check out the Ball State Daily News. But BG is better-served by its paper than most campuses across the country.

[Schadenfreude]

Transfer:

Since my time at BG, I've critiqued dozens and dozens of newspapers - both college and "professional." While I have a deep resentment toward the way I see the J-school floundering - IMHO - I can say that you'd be surprised at how well The News stacked up and stacks up against what I've seen. If you want to see the best, check out the Ball State Daily News. But BG is better-served by its paper than most campuses across the country.

I agree on all counts, including the floundering part.

(IPCO and journalism together under one roof? Whose *dumb* idea was that?)

[UK Peregrine]

If you want to see the best, check out the Ball State Daily News. But BG is better-served by its paper than most campuses across the country.

BSU's paper is quite impressive. I really like the fact that you can get a pdf of the daily paper in print format. I would even say it puts the KY Kernel to shame, which I thought was decent student newspaper.

As for the BGNews, more often than not an pretty exemplary effort. At other times, it lacks in substance, i.e. opinion page. Maybe the BGNews doesn't get many opinion submissions and has to fill space with the people on the street survey. And judging by a few of the opinion submissions they do publish, the pickings probably are a little slim. But really, the people in the street section is the most inane section of any paper I have seen. The section consistently gets one liners (sometimes hilarious) on how much do you drink and who would you rather go on a date with. The opinion section is bad enough without this pointless drivel.

[Schadenfreude]

Trust me: Reporters hate doing MOS as much as you hate reading it.

[hammb]

My first couple years there the BG News had an awesome crossword puzzle in it. It was large and fairly difficult. My last year or two there, OTOH, they switched to a very small crossword that seemed to have at least 2 or 3 clues that were duplicates of the previous days'. It sucked.

Other than switching to a crappy crossword, I've always enjoyed the BG News

[kdog27]

The BGNews job maybe to report the news but it is not its job to make the football team look like a joke. I have always thought the people on the street questions were pretty dumb when I was there. A good example of that is in the Fall of 2000 one day the question was something like this "How different is it not having a union on campus ?" And guess who they asked that question to? All freshmen. How would they possibly know the difference? I can think of other examples like this when they only asked questions to freshmen when they needed some othere classes represented but that one always took the cake for me. Asking freshmen girls about the football team is great way to make it look like no one cares about the team. And if that guys response was a joke it certainly did not come across that way. Him and his friends would be the only people to know that.

[Metz]

It is harder than you think to have a daily college newspaper. Most daily newspapers are great everyday because the people that work there ONLY work there. Student newspapers however are completely different. Between classes, the BG News, and sometimes second or third jobs, I know that many of the people working there are under a lot of stress. As for People on the Street, when the reporter goes to do this, they ask the first 4 people they find. There is no reason that anyone should have to ask more than 4 just so they can only run the answers YOU want to read about. If any of you think you could put a newspaper out everyday of the week along with your other jobs, let me know when you start. I'll be the there laughing at you when it looks like crap, the content sucks, and everyone else is saying how bad they think it is. Until I see some of you putting out a daily newspaper, show some respect. As the year goes on, reporters will get better, photographers will take better photos, and the layouts will look better (we just switched from QuarkXPress to InDesign). A lot of the staff is freshmen and are just starting. Some may have never reported or did anything before college. I agree with Grant that this is a silly post but most of all, I don't see any of you doing anything to help the BG News get better so why complain?

[NWLB]

I’ll clarify one aspect of my comments. When I say its not worth much, I’m speaking in terms of what kind of an impact it has on campus. It is like the USG, which is a debate for another day. Sure its there. You’ll never get ride of it. However, day-in, day-out, nobody on campus gives a rat’s behind what it says or does. It is not, has never been, and likely won’t ever be a potent voice within the campus community. That is a function of the campus and community culture, which has never felt the burning need for student government, or a student paper with influence. For either group to have influence, somebody would have to believe the students really do consider one or both as speaking for them. Historically that has never been the case. Its like student council in high school or junior high school. Everybody knows that it is around. It is just that nobody cares.

Students at BGSU feel they have a friend, and an approachable administration with Ribeau. Save for select points in time, when people living in BG, working at or attending BGSU have had an issue, they have always felt able to take it to whomever they felt should do something. Or they have sensed the message getting to the powers that be.

I don’t buy the view that simply because the students don’t “work there full time” that the paper has an excuse for being lousy. I don’t want to beat up on kids that think they are trying hard. Maybe for whatever skill and talent they have, they are actually working hard. In the end, the most I can hope for in reading that paper for the last 12 years, is a well spell-checked article. To many times people in student driven groups define success as what the person before them did. Which leads to a downward spiral of results. Since it is a university student centered activity, nobody dares say the word failure, or "bad job." That might hurt somebody's feelings, god forbid they learn to do it better next time. Too quickly we accept somebody's "best try" as success and declare we are doing a "great job." Poppy-cock.

Again, it speaks to a lousy support system for the paper at some level. If doing a solid job, and creating a truly great student paper were a priority, the students would drive themselves to death wanting to do things right and well. The faculty working with them would inspire them to do better. And in the end, the product on paper would be better. I see none of that happening.

All of the talk of it being an “independent student voice” becomes a sad excuse for a lot of students to waste time creating resume filler with a by-line. I think the best thing that could happen would be to usurp the student paper and force it into a revamped journalism department. Since the paper isn’t a viable or even desirable voice for the students, I see little harm in dispensing with the pretense of objective, independent student journalism. We might finally see a paper emerge that can hold its head up among major college papers, not simply other low-level student projects. If the BG News was actually the “best in the land” in 1989 I can only cringe at how very far its fallen.

[CapitalFalcon]

Too quickly we accept somebody's "best try" as success and declare we are doing a "great job." Poppy-cock.

He said cock...

[JTJ94]

This whole thread is misdirected. And let me say the dissertation of distain above is the most laughable literary gymnastics that I've read in a long time.

If ANY student at BGSU, and I mean any of the 20,000 don't know or don't care to know about the grandness of the football program, then athletic department needs to be held responsible. It is their responsibility to promote BG Athletics and no one else.

Now it will take time (a decade or two of winning) to get every man, woman and child to bleed burnt orange and seal brown, but in the meantime, the athletic department should error on the side of too much promotion rather than an ad here and a table tent there. We should read articles that claim waste due to so much promotion. Give the football team (and others) a shot at having a packed house. Folks on campus shouldn't wake up and wonder why people are flocking to the East side of campus. They should be in that number!!!

Give me posters ... sandwich boards ... TV and Radio ads .... rolling billboards ... SOMETHING!!!!!!!

P.S. For those who say The BGNews and organizations like USG are useless, I always wondered two things: 1.) How do you really know? and 2.) What have you done to assist in the effectiveness of said groups?

[Schadenfreude]

I’ll clarify one aspect of my comments. When I say its not worth much, I’m speaking in terms of what kind of an impact it has on campus. It is like the USG, which is a debate for another day. Sure its there. You’ll never get ride of it. However, day-in, day-out, nobody on campus gives a rat’s behind what it says or does. It is not, has never been, and likely won’t ever be a potent voice within the campus community.

This just isn't true.

One example -- and it isn't even the best one I can think of, but it will do:

Those of you now attending classes at BGSU may be familar with the Student Organizations Funding Board. From what I understand, it is a committee of students charged with allocating portion of student fees to various student organizations.

It's precessor was the Advisory Committee for General Fee Allocation (or "ACGFA") Students were appointed to AGFA and they made the call on what student organizations received student fee money.

Well, times were tough back in the early 1990s. One spring, the administrator for student affairs announced there would be no ACGFA process. Instead, he said, allocations to student organizations would be frozen in place until next year.

Well, The BG News put this story on the top of the front page. We published a tough story that questioned what financially tough times had to do with cutting students out of the process.

The very next day, the university reversed course and decided to go ahead with the AGFA process after all.

In other words, because of The BG News, the students voice over allocation of a portion of the student fee was preserved.

That was a victory for students, and The BG News made a difference there.

That's one example. There are others.

I don’t buy the view that simply because the students don’t “work there full time” that the paper has an excuse for being lousy.

I don't even buy that it's lousy.

I don’t want to beat up on kids that think they are trying hard.

You are doing a good job of it.

Again, it speaks to a lousy support system for the paper at some level. If doing a solid job, and creating a truly great student paper were a priority, the students would drive themselves to death wanting to do things right and well.

You have no idea how much work goes into that paper. You really don't.

We all have recurring nightmares. Let me share one of mine.

In my nightmare, I register for a class and promptly forget all about it -- until finals week, when I suddenly realize I've skipped 15 weeks worth of classes. I show up for the final exam and struggle with a test on material of which I know nothing about. Then I wake up in a cold sweat.

Why do I have that nightmare? I have it because I worked at The BG News. I was over there so much my senior year that I probably missed half the lectures in some of my classes.

The faculty working with them

Faculty do not work with them. It is an independent newspaper, advised by the director of student publications, who is wholly independent of the journalism department.

When I was there, his approach was pretty simple: If you wanted advice on something, you could stop by his office. Other than that, all he did was read the paper in the morning and critique it by marking it up with red ink.

It was an excellent system. I learned more about reporting through that daily "ream" that I ever did in a journalism class. We had the freedom to run the paper in the way we thought best -- but we always knew that if we did a crappy job, we would be called out for it in the next day's ream.

All of the talk of it being an “independent student voice” becomes a sad excuse for a lot of students to waste time creating resume filler with a by-line.

Those stories have helped get hundreds of people jobs.

If you want a resume stuffer, join the Theta Chis. The BG News is for people who want to be journalists.

I think the best thing that could happen would be to usurp the student paper and force it into a revamped journalism department.

That's the worst thing that could happen, for many reasons I don't care to get into here.

If there is a decline -- and I'm not acknowledging that point -- then it may reflect the fact that the journalism department is also in a state of decline. That's 87's sense, and it's mine, too.

Fifteen years ago, we operated with the confidence that only Ohio University's journalism program was clearly better than ours.

I'm not sure today's students operate with that same level of confidence. If I had to guess, I would guess Kent State's program may have passed Bowling Green's by.

Since the paper isn’t a viable or even desirable voice for the students

In your opinion.

, I see little harm in dispensing with the pretense of objective, independent student journalism.

It's not a pretense. It's a decades-old tradition. And it is important.

We might finally see a paper emerge that can hold its head up among major college papers,

I'm not in a position to evaluate The BG News right now. I don't read it every day. But, again, in 1989 it was the best in the country according to the Society of Professional Journalists. The only paper that came close at the time was The Post, at Ohio University. The (Ohio State) Lantern, a journalism-department overseen lab newspaper, was absymal.

Even now, the only public universities in Ohio that *have* dailies are Ohio State, Ohio U. and Kent State.

By that measure alone, The BG News is much better than the student newspapers at most of Ohio's public universities. At Cincinnati, students get three newspapers a week. At Miami and Toledo, they get two.

At the end of the day, your critique of The BG News is about as meaningful to me as my critique of playing corner would be to Keon Newson.

[bgbill]

I've had that nightmare. I wasn't associated with The BG News - I don't think so anyway - it was the sixties - maybe I was.

We'll have to get this BG News thread off the football forum.

[bgmaggot00]

I agree with McMetz on this one. Seeing that he's the person that does the people on the street, I'm sure he LOVES reading this thread about how bad the BG News is. Thats all for now, Jeff

[hammb]

I’ll clarify one aspect of my comments. When I say its not worth much, I’m speaking in terms of what kind of an impact it has on campus. It is like the USG, which is a debate for another day. Sure its there. You’ll never get ride of it. However, day-in, day-out, nobody on campus gives a rat’s behind what it says or does. It is not, has never been, and likely won’t ever be a potent voice within the campus community. That is a function of the campus and community culture, which has never felt the burning need for student government, or a student paper with influence. For either group to have influence, somebody would have to believe the students really do consider one or both as speaking for them. Historically that has never been the case. Its like student council in high school or junior high school. Everybody knows that it is around. It is just that nobody cares.

Students at BGSU feel they have a friend, and an approachable administration with Ribeau. Save for select points in time, when people living in BG, working at or attending BGSU have had an issue, they have always felt able to take it to whomever they felt should do something. Or they have sensed the message getting to the powers that be.

I don’t buy the view that simply because the students don’t “work there full time” that the paper has an excuse for being lousy. I don’t want to beat up on kids that think they are trying hard. Maybe for whatever skill and talent they have, they are actually working hard. In the end, the most I can hope for in reading that paper for the last 12 years, is a well spell-checked article. To many times people in student driven groups define success as what the person before them did. Which leads to a downward spiral of results. Since it is a university student centered activity, nobody dares say the word failure, or "bad job." That might hurt somebody's feelings, god forbid they learn to do it better next time. Too quickly we accept somebody's "best try" as success and declare we are doing a "great job." Poppy-cock.

Again, it speaks to a lousy support system for the paper at some level. If doing a solid job, and creating a truly great student paper were a priority, the students would drive themselves to death wanting to do things right and well. The faculty working with them would inspire them to do better. And in the end, the product on paper would be better. I see none of that happening.

All of the talk of it being an “independent student voice” becomes a sad excuse for a lot of students to waste time creating resume filler with a by-line. I think the best thing that could happen would be to usurp the student paper and force it into a revamped journalism department. Since the paper isn’t a viable or even desirable voice for the students, I see little harm in dispensing with the pretense of objective, independent student journalism. We might finally see a paper emerge that can hold its head up among major college papers, not simply other low-level student projects. If the BG News was actually the “best in the land” in 1989 I can only cringe at how very far its fallen.

Wow...I've never seen anyone type so much and still say absolutely nothing of substance. As a recent student I very much enjoyed the BG News. I think they covered BG athletics better than the Sentinel, and I enjoyed reading the student written articles. I used many of the reviews (movies, music, games) to make buying decisions, and as I said I enjoyed the OLD crossword puzzle.

I know that McMetz puts in a helluva lotta work to help get the BG News out and he sure as hell ain't the only one. I was never a part of the BG News, but I certainly read it a lot. Heck if I'm thinking about it in BG I will still pick up a copy and read through it. Its FUN. Sure, it is not making deep political statements on a daily basis, but that's not the point of it. As a general rule the student body isn't concerned with deep political debate on a daily basis. They're college students, and its a college paper, and a pretty damn good one if you ask me.

Nathan, I think you need to take a step back and look at what you said. Didn't your mother ever tell you, "If you cannot say anything nice..."? What's the point of writing a long winded put down of the student paper? Especially when there are many current & retired BG News staffers on this site? Say you don't care for the paper, that's fine its your opinion, but when you question the work they're putting in I think you're seriously off base.

Sorry if you take any offense to my post, but reading yours it was clearly written with some measure of viciousness against the BG News. I respect the hard work that so many pour into that paper, and if we're not getting the USA Today, I can deal with that. I don't think that the goal of a college paper should be to mimic a national daily publication. To say that the paper is not a voice of the students is ludicrous. Have you talked to a student lately? 90% of the conversations among college students will revolve around classes, beer, video games, music, movies, TV, and the opposite sex; all of which are addressed quite frequently in the BG News. When a real issue DOES arise within the campus community it is almost always addressed on the pages of the BG News, and then followed up upon in the opinion letters section.

Its too bad your mind is so clouded that you have missed out on a pretty darn good student run paper.

[Metz]

I agree with McMetz on this one. Seeing that he's the person that does the people on the street, I'm sure he LOVES reading this thread about how bad the BG News is. Thats all for now, Jeff

I actually do not do that anymore Jeff. And when I did, I was just taking the pics and asking the questions I was given by higher ups.