Business Insider’s Henry Blodget is Wrong: Here’s Why.
Part 2.
journalism
All posts tagged journalism
3 Reasons Students Should Not Follow the Joe Weisenthal Reporting Plan.
Continued in the next post
I was too lazy to post the pdf as a photo/take a better picture.
My only instructions were to run that one mugshot big, get those two photos and other mugs in, get a timeline and info box in, post the two stories under one headline and blow the managing editor away. The thing I do like about the berliner size is that, some days, they dedicate almost the entire or the entire front to the story of the day. This was it. I saw some minor things I should have done better but I did this hard against deadline. About this time two years ago was the first time I designed a page. This paper’s editor was budding mancrush pleased. Despite the minor flaws, I’m pleased. This caught someone’s eye and they plunked down 50 cents. I don’t need to be the one writing the story as long as, at the literal end of the day, I make the ugly truth look good on paper. And that’s why, regardless of what has been thrown at me the past six years, I look forward to going to work every morning.
Update #1: I learned more about the suicidal comment but, I’m sticking to my former newspaper’s policy on suicide and attempts and just saying it was taken very seriously.
Full disclosure: I learned last night that I know people who know the suspect and I’m somewhat aiding in Emily Cole’s post-graduate job hunt. I still don’t know how I wound up getting fully entrenched in this story from over 200 miles away. A list of a good chunk of the stories related to this and controversy from earlier in the academic year can be found under the tab The Captain’s Log and CNU. I’m not writing this as a straight news item so there will be some editorializing.
The Daily Press posted this brief that fills in a gap but there are still some unanswered questions. Despite that, it’s enough to do a roundup of everything that took place since that fateful night at the end of March 2012 on the East Campus of Christopher Newport University.
According to Daily Press articles, on Wednesday, March 28 and Thursday, March 29, a student or students or another person annoyed at the situation alerted police to the existence of illegal drugs of some sort in Wilson 231B. CNU Police swooped in on Wednesday, according to some documents quoted by the Daily Press, and allegedly uncover liquid chemicals and paraphernalia and on that Thursday, a lab in Norfolk confirmed that the chemicals could be used to make meth. Police evacuated the room, sealed it as a crime scene and did a second search that police say included recovering fumes related to cooking drugs. Here’s where the narrative gets hazy. If that happened Thursday, why was Wilson not evacuated as a whole until 7 p.m. Friday? If it were a meth lab, did CNU let CNU Village roll along for about another day with potentially volatile materials unattended in a room?
Regardless, 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 30 was not a drill: Get out of Wilson Hall; we’re going to announce an hour later that we found a suspected meth lab. At some point, according to the Daily Press, one of the students who lived in Wilson 231 returned, which is another hazy point. So, after the initial investigation the day before, there was no disciplinary action to the people in the room or earlier that day, whichever day it was? Other students reported two people being in handcuffs to the student newspaper.
According to the Daily Press brief, a student, Derek Werner, 20, of the Western Branch area of Chesapeake, my ancestral home, allegedly claimed all of the material was his on March 29, given the offense date in the Newport News General District Court’s system.
At some point, the detainee who lived in 231 — it could have been Werner or another student as at least two people lived in that room — made an alleged suicidal comment that was most likely a figure of speech, according to the Daily Press. He was charged with trespassing by the university, I assume. There is a chance that he had been told to remove himself from Wilson the day before but that gets into things CNU most likely will not release readily. Two students, I’m assuming Werner and either a friend or roommate, were banned from the campus. Apparently, honor code violations are still churning through the system.
As local media began to descend on this breaking news story, someone hacked into the website of The Captain’s Log, the student newspaper, in an attempt to shut it down. The hack did not work immediately.
On that Monday, April 2, according to the Daily Press, Werner was interviewed again and confirmed that the material was his apparently as waiving his right to an attorney. By this point, this was a blip on the state media wire that probably would have disappeared quickly from widespread scrutiny.
On Wednesday, April 4, that week’s edition of The Captain’s Log hit the stands and this story grew a second head. It just so happened to be the day of an admissions event. Not long afterward, in a move that confirmed the suspicions of CLOG staff members for over a decade, someone employed with the school administration called for the removal of the papers so the front-page brief on what occurred in 231B would not negatively affect the experience of those prospective students and their parents. Some people who were caught with the papers and they were returned. That then gained the attention of the CLOG alumni and, subsequently, state and national media.
As I haven’t heard otherwise from Cole, who technically is editor in chief until tomorrow, there hasn’t been a direct apology to CLOG. President Paul Trible wrote a blanket email that touched on the subject and no further questions on it by the media were directly answered. This part of the story almost fizzled out because it was so close to the end of the year and a couple other colleges had bigger run-ins with their student papers but, on Friday, April 13, the CLOG website went down. By the time it is up and running again, we learn of how the hack began the night of March 30. For all we know, that was an incidence of synchronicity. At this point, the CLOG was more or less done with its year of editions.
A little over a week later, on Tuesday, April 24, Werner is arrested and charged with manufacture of a Schedule 1 narcotic on college property and possession and/or manufacture of DMT, which was what was found. DMT and meth are not one and the same but this probably will wind up being the “CNU Meth Lab” story for years to come.
Werner first appeared before a judge the following day and the arraignment/bond hearing (it’s hard to tell exactly what the hearing was for just from the court system) was continued until May 9. Due to the lack of releases from Newport News and CNU or the nature of the news cycle at the Daily Press, that brief that puts some of this in context did not appear until 10 p.m. last night online and I’m assuming is in today’s paper. Literally 36 hours from when that article appeared online, some of the people who have head or were involved in both heads of this story will graduate and whatever wheels at CNU that need to turn will turn under less scrutiny.
We still don’t know what will happen with the second student or if anything has yet. We still don’t know the correct timeline. There still hasn’t been any reconciliation between CLOG and CNU. The journalism program has still been set out to die on the vine.
This story is far from over.
There haven’t been any major updates to the CLOG situation lately and the CLOG-CNU page is doing its job of redirecting. I can kinda make this part of my blog my blog again. I’ll still hold off on the ’80s April for a few more days or so.
I haven’t been getting out lately. I think I got a little homesick for Richmond and sick of living 10 hours away from my girlfriend (could be worse as my best friend is 23 hours by car from his girlfriend and, in a couple of weeks, will be going to Afghanistan for nine months). Additionally, I’m been putting my money to more constructive use as of late instead of going to bars. I don’t know what’s wrong with me either. I don’t like this growing up thing.
I decided to change that this week. My goal is to be out of the house every day by noon, including the days I work, unless it’s raining and I don’t have spare money to be somewhere indoors that isn’t a library. Making friends is optional. I don’t need more friends and, no offense, but I don’t think I have an awful lot in common with the 19-year-old Marines running around here.
Speaking of Marines, I went to Wilmington today because it reminds me a lot of Richmond. I guess I should say Richmond reminds me a lot of Wilmington because I toured it more before I got to know Richmond and Jacksonville’s proximity to Wilmington was the biggest factor in applying to my current job.
I hadn’t been downtown in three months. I didn’t realize that much time had gone by. I eventually worked my way down to the Cape Fear River and sat down near the end of Market Street to read a book. A few moments later, an agitated man started packing back and forth and appeared to be trying to get Camp Lejeune on the phone. Eventually he managed to get through. He wanted to know if anyone had found Lance Cpl. John Pruitt. He had a strong Northern accent. I don’t know why it stuck out as I rarely hear Southern or stereotypical North Carolina accents.
“I’m standing about where he apparently went in,” the man eventually said after identifying himself as one of Pruitt’s extremely close friends.
Pruitt fell or jumped into the tea-colored, tannin-rich estuary Sunday at about 11 p.m. and hasn’t been seen since. He is 24. The man said Pruitt was supposed to be heading to Afghanistan soon.
I almost wanted to wait for him to get off the phone and talk to him as this story also involves my company’s newspaper’s coverage area and he probably would be good for quotes or background. Then I assessed the area: The wooden tables and chairs. The weathered planks suspended over the bank of the river that vibrated as a little girl ran past. The clanging of ship bells and their horns. The distant rumble of traffic over the bridges. The shade at the information booth that compelled me to pick the spot. The tranquility of the mostly sunny, breezy, low-80s day. The concern in his voice for his most likely dead friend mixed with the “Why?” that will be in his voice whenever he speaks of Pruitt for this point forward.
I wondered how long it took him to get to the foot of Market Street and from where, if he dropped his entire life to get into a near argument with a Marine official at the very spot his friend slipped into the water.
I thought about when I drove to the spot on U.S. Route 60 where one of my high school friends, Joe Tvelia, died and how I all but begged the public relations officer to give me the official account of what happened. I had the same “Why?” in my voice.
I thought of the despair I saw in my years as a reporter and an editor with reporting duties in Central Virginia. I wrote a lot of stories about tragic loss. I was good at it and writing articles in general but I didn’t like doing it. It reinforced my desire to be a copy editor and nothing more. A frustrated It who was about to be transferred to another military official and didn’t like the runaround was pacing a few feet in front of me.
Not this. Not today. Not now. Not again. Never again.
I closed my book, stood and left the scene.
Samieh Shalash of the Daily Press has written a blog entry on this past weekend’s hack on The Captain’s Log site. It also includes the picture I took of my screen as this was unfolding. If I knew it would be in a place where more people would have seen it, I would have done a proper screen capture.
We still don’t know exactly who did it or whence it came. As the days wear on, I’m leaning more toward the date of the hack in relation to the alleged meth lab story being a coincidence. It would be a different story if The Captain’s Log had a breaking news update up that very night. Then again, someone may have been attempting to keep that from happening but the shutdown took longer than expected. One of our tech-savvy alumni said the hack was “amateur.”
By the virtue of injecting the viaduct into this, I’ve had a few interesting conversations with students and faculty about this situation and how it plugs into the climate at CNU as a whole. I just wish some of these people would go on the record but I see why they don’t want to. Going against any authority is a daunting task. I know. I’ve battled the administration as a CLOG member and as a founder of my fraternity chapter. I’ve battled a rival newspaper that I purposely made my rival. I’ve battled the entire city of Hopewell, Va., and I refuse to say that contributed to the lies surrounding why Katy and I no longer work there because it does nothing but prove me right.
I think I may have a problem with authority.
The semester at Christopher Newport University is winding down and many of the issues that brought you all here have not been resolved. I’ve seen this tactic before. Emily and a crop of other students will be gone for good in a couple of weeks. Those who are coming back next year have about three months of vacations and being thrust back into their no longer recognizable high school worlds to forget about this all. Nothing has been done yet about the alleged meth lab. It’s a variation of the five-year rule: Almost every time CNU has backtracked on an unpopular decision, it comes up again five years later when those students who remembered are in small enough numbers that it isn’t fought. This current situation, though, seems like it is a PR nightmare that may take more than the summer to disappear at this rate. Especially if the Washington Post makes good on having a followup.
Here’s what I think happened along the 12300 block of Warwick Boulevard from late March until today after hearing parts of it from a student thinking roughly the same thing. Bear with me as this is lengthy:
There was the initial noise/drug complaint that brought campus police to Wilson Hall. They allegedly found drugs and detected some chemicals. Sure, there may have been precursors to making meth but there could have been several reasons why they were there. From what I know, meth is made out of a lot of chemicals, some of which household, and I’ve had questionable items in my dorm several times for quasi-legit purposes. It’s a college dorm. We needed that can of gasoline. I needed that metal baseball bat. I needed that enormous kitchen knife. We needed that spray paint. We needed those bottles of liquor hidden in the drop ceilings of James River Hall. But I digress.
Once the hazard was identified as possibly the makings of a meth lab, the next order of business was the correct one — call Newport News Police and get everyone out of that building. They found hydrochloric acid. I’m not going to make it sound all mysterious like the affidavit implied and call it muriatic acid. From the article I read, this extra-mysterious acid because of usage of an uncommon name was all that was confiscated as far as a precursor to meth other than that, they had traces of what could be Spice and marijuana. We have chemistry students at the school. We have people who may have hydrochloric acid because they want some. I’m not making excuses for them and, since I’m 200 miles away and can’t get my hands on the affidavit (I wish I had a copy), the statement that the acid was all they confiscated in relation to a possible meth lab would be a prosecutorial stretch. As far as I know, the question of if they actually found trace amount of Spice and pot is still up in the air. Either way, since they were caught with “ muriatic acid” (sounds so much less legit to possess, doesn’t it?) in a place where they really shouldn’t have had it, they were banned. Fair enough. I think the trespassing charge was a bit much at that particular moment but, again, I wasn’t there. I’m certain the suicidal comment was an offhand statement.
Currently, the Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney is looking into what they have to prosecute. They probably have something but the time it’s taking is making me think that the university rules violations are probably bigger, as in the alleged small amount of illegal drugs and any chemicals implied or outright banned in the residence life handbook. The meth angle may have been dead in the water unofficially by the time the CLOG got its story out. Even if it was declared not a meth lab back when this all went down, the disruption of East Campus (well, the campus as a whole) was enough to make the front page.
Either way, the possibilities of what some parents may think after seeing an article on the incident all over the campus was a risk some in campus administration wasn’t willing to take. Papers have disappeared during admissions events before so it was probably no big deal to the person or people who ordered the removal. Unlike the countless other times this occurred for at least 15 years, they were caught with ink on their hands.
After a previous paper theft over a story earlier in the academic year that went away without any released action from the university (correct me if I’m wrong here) and the attacks on the print product earlier in 2011, this set of a firestorm bigger than the meth story would have been unless they found students in the process of cooking it up or if those students were cooking it up, did something wrong and blasted a hole in the side of CNU Village.
Regardless of what some people may think of the quality of the newspaper, it is still very much the newspaper of the alumni. Many of us have our jobs because of that paper and we hope that tradition continues. We weren’t going to let them get pushed around, especially after our suspicions were finally confirmed about the paper thefts. We helped them blow this up with no regrets. The story grew legs and the disruption of the website has turned this into the story that just will not die.
CNU wants this to go away, obviously. It’s bad for business for this to drag along for more than half a month now. I think the best thing to do at this point is for
- the CA to put up or shut up on state charges,
- CNU to apologize directly to Emily and the other staff members,
- CNU to halt its endless campaign against the CLOG while constantly saying it’s not waging an endless campaign against the CLOG and
- there to be a real discussion with CLOG alumni, the incoming CLOG staff, the administration and local media.
I don’t like seeing my campus newspaper under fire essentially because it exists and wants to uncover the truth from time to time. I don’t like that I can compose a list detailing the rocky relationship between CNU and CLOG from this academic year alone and round up more than a few people to share stories from years before. I don’t like that, regardless of how they spin it, the journalism program has been effectively obliterated at CNU. I don’t like that some people think weakening the program and attempting to make the CLOG go away is justified because, for some examples, there is a sex column that includes some slang/profanity and that the copy editing isn’t all that great at times. It’s a college newspaper. Unless we become bloggers or work for an alternative paper, this is the only time we may be able to get a word stronger than damn that is appropriate for the situation printed. And we know when to rein it in to send off clips for a job only to find out that the same dirty jokes in the college newsroom continue in the real one.
I don’t like that, for whatever reason, The Captain’s Log site was hacked.
I don’t like that I want the pressure and the spotlight to remain on CNU until it embraces the quote I put at the top of the page I created as a catch-all for all this past academic year: “… [A] college or university administration needs to provide for student journalism in its budget, within reason, with the goal of providing real-world exposure to newspapering and online work. And that administration needs to stand aside and let the paper act as a real, independent newspaper.”
I don’t like that the fates of two students hang in the balance so close to the end of the semester and we may never know what became of them. There’s a chance that, other than it possibly being wrong to have muriatic acid hydrochloric acid in their room, there was nothing illegal in their 231B at all and this was all for naught. The lack of any official action is making me have my doubts. If this is all true, they are complete idiots, they need to be prosecuted and I hope their parents never let them forget the thousands of dollars paid for them to toss away their educations.
I don’t like that this is all about my school.
The Captain’s Log site is running again. I haven’t asked anyone about any further details yet because it’s 2 a.m. I’ll get details tomorrow, hopefully.
In other news, the semester is almost over. I suspect, we won’t hear anything new about the alleged meth lab until a few weeks after the semester is over and I’m doubtful that the administration will say anything else about taking the papers unless the Washington Post does another story, which I hope is the case. I, for one, just really want these real and perceived attacks on student media from the CNU administration to end.
Update 4: The hack began the night of March 30, the day the evacuation of Wilson Hall over the suspected meth lab occurred. Google flagged it the next day and the hack apparently hit terminal havoc today. I can’t even form a comment right now. Please be a coincidence.
Update 3: I’m going to try to decipher this from those in the know. It was an SQL Injection hack that has been going on for almost two weeks.
They may have compromised the database that runs the site with which the site is run. They need to talk to the host for the site as soon as possible.
It can’t be a coincidence. The meth story started breaking two weeks ago. This really is disappointing.
Update 2: Officially hacked. CLOG alumni are working with current staff on the issue. To paraphrase a former A+E editor, I find this oddly touching.
Update: This is what comes up for them in Google. I guess someone really did take down their site.
There’s a note that The Captain’s Log website may have been compromised and it’s offline. Their email isn’t working either. They’re working on solutions.
This just went from ridiculous to outrageous.
If it was hacked, loving CNU in the way Trible described taking papers is one thing. Purposely taking down their entire website is another matter entirely. This cannot be tolerated by this or any other college’s administration.
I really hope this is some sort of coincidental glitch but the timing is bothering me.
The Daily Press has more information on the initial alleged meth lab story. It appears that CNU wasn’t clear about this whole incident from the beginning (I’m blogging from my phone so I can’t readily post the initial articles; if you’re here, you know how to find them).
In a perfect world, this was released sooner and there would have been no paper theft. There are still some unanswered questions about the incident that should be public record at this point.
A little birdie told me The Washington Post isn’t through looking at the entire situation.
I agree with Emily: We don’t love the school less than anyone else. This love is like the love you get from your mother when you do something stupid and you get smacked upside the head.
I’ve updated the shiny and new page wholly dedicated to The Captain’s Log and CNU with links to articles in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and, most importantly, The Washington Post. I’ll make updates here as things go along but I’m really pushing for everyone going to the CLOG-CNU page so I can get back to trivial things here like posting YouTube videos of ’80s songs for the remainder of April. Because it’s my blog, I’m paying for it and I’m not very keen on redesigning the whole thing right now..
