With another semester wrapping up, we here at Ed Board have decided to take a moment to review some of the best and worst moments of 2006 at The Daily Campus. From First Amendment issues to outrageous headlines, The DC sometimes does exemplary journalism and sometimes reminds everyone it is a student newspaper.
Sometimes The DC’s bad moments come from jumpy nerves. Covering a women’s basketball game late in the season, Sports Editor Garrett Haake knocked over a full cup of water all over the athletics office, nearly soaking The Dallas Morning News reporter Calvin Watkin’s laptop. Not the ideal way to make a good impression.
Then there was Arts and Entertainment Editor Tiffany Glick, who was accused of annihilating freedom of the press by firing two food critics who refused to write about food. Take that First Amendment!
Having defamed country, Glick next went after God. She drew the ire of many on campus for actually writing a negative review of Christian rappers Five Point Covenant. It is a wonder she wasn’t smote by lightning, the godless communist.
These major infractions aside, The DC also blew it on more day-to-day basis with spelling, grammar and layout mistakes. It repeated dates, misspelled words and sometimes didn’t always make sense. Did you know Matt Doherty was SMU’s new basketball? We thought not! But by and large, we have to admit the content and copy has improved substantially from previous years.
Special thanks to our intrepid readership, some from as far away as New Jersey, who write in weekly to tell us what we spelled wrong. No one ever taught us how to right.
But not everything the staff does up here is compost material; some of it is actually quite good.
The DC’s dedicated news staff introduced the campus to the Meadows dean candidates and led all the local media in coverage of SMU’s bid for the Bush library, as well as the odd happenings at University Gardens. It carried in-depth coverage of the downtown immigration rallies and investigated the shadiness of the Phoenix apartments.
Sports broke news of Coach Tubbs’ firing and gave athletes its own voice through the persons of Chris Phillips and Trent Redden.
The opinion page created news for us by running what much of the campus thought to be an outrageously inflammatory response to a George Henson Op-Ed. It inspired a campus-wide debate about gay rights, hate speech and the role of a campus newspaper.
We’re a student paper, and when we blow it, you let us know. We appreciate that. But we do some stuff we’re really proud of too. Its been a fun semester for us here writing, and we hope you enjoy reading — even if it’s just to see what we screw up next. Good luck on tests, and we’ll see you next fall.
