The article I chose was in the DA today in the opinion section. It was a message from the editorial staff because they are dissappointed to hear about the WVU College Republicans starting their own newspaper, "The Mountaineer Jeffersonian" instead of contributing tho the DA. The writer(s) claim they are "disheartened" about the new paper which will display more conservative opinions than the DA does. They continue their article with describing how each opinion columnist is welcome to contribute whatever opinion they have, especially when it comes to politics.
From what I gathered, the writer(s) stasis argument rested both at conjecture and quality. Conjecture because it implyed that "The Mountaineer Jeffersonian" exisits and is a problem because it is taking away "welcomed" opinions from the DA. This view also falls under quality because without enough conservative opinions in the DA, the opinion section is a bad thing since it wont display an even amount of political opinions, which are important in a collegiate paper since it is there to "inform, educate and enlighten" the students at WVU.
The position of the writer(s) is obvious because they work/write for the DA so of course they don't want competition to their paper. However, I don't think their stasis was achieved because they didn't do a good enough job supporting the idea of an alternative place to freedom of expression.
November 13th 2008 Class Stuff
15 years ago
1 comment:
You're right to target the focus on the question of quality here; the question seems to be something like, "Is it better for a group to participate in a collective debate or for a group to create a separate forum for voicing its views?" What question of definition do you think seems to be applicable here? How would the DA editorial board define this decision by the College Republicans?
Also, it's interesting to note how the questions posed and answered by the DA editorial board are positioned between the theoretical and practical questions, although definitely more toward the end of the practical. As a theoretical question, the editors are referring to that democratic ideal of all voices in a community getting a chance to be heard ad to participate in public debate; it moves toward the practical end, though, as it deals in the specifics of the WVU community and this specific founding of the College Republican newspaper.
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