Northwestern Columnist Questions Dean’s Anonymous Sources
Score one for the little guy? A senior at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism has dared to challenge that school's dean, John Lavine, by questioning the administrator's use of anonymous sources in his writings for the Medill magazine.
David Spett's column in the Daily Northwestern asks why, in one case, Lavine felt the need to attribute a seemingly innocuous quote to an anonymous junior. The quote:
"I came to Medill because I want to inform people and make things better. Journalism is the best way for me to do that, but I sure felt good about this class. It is one of the best I've taken, and I learned many things in it that apply as much to truth-telling in journalism as to this campaign to save teenage drivers."
Spett then did his own investigative work and couldn't find any student who admitted to saying or E-mailing the quote to the dean.
Lavine defended the authenticity of the quotes to the Chicago Tribune, saying, "Context is all-important. I wasn't doing a news story. I wasn't covering the news.... When I write news stories, I am as careful and thorough about sources as anyone you will find.... This is not a news story. This is a personal letter."
The controversy has put Lavine's contested curriculum overhaul, announced last year, under greater scrutiny and has provided fodder for discussion in Medill's own journalism ethics classes. Said one student: "It is an opinion piece, but it is not just like anyone writing an opinion piece. He is the dean of a journalism school."
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Medill Marketing Prof. Smears J-School Student Spett
The Medill story is old news by now, but since US News is so widely read, especially for the college rankings info, this might be of interest to anyone considering applying to J-school.
Check out how Medill's (I'm so not kidding, either) Chief Marketing Officer attacks an investigative journalist's credibility just because the investigative journalist did investigative journalism.
http://journalistsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/03/zorn-haydens-letter-petulant-and-weak.html
Seriously. Click on the link, there, and read the letter from Hayden, which apparently also went out on some type of internal listserv, an official channel of communication, if I'm correct in the facts surrounding this issue.
They attack the reputations and credibility of their own J-school students for merely doing an investigative journalism piece? Unbelievable.
While there are still many fair-minded people at Northwestern, it's utterly outrageous that when criticized, some professors at the school get defensive and start attacking the students.
It's bad enough that some of the political radicals attack the more right-leaning students in the other schools with smears and attacks on reputation (seriously, it's no big secret that many many even slightly-right-of-center students get attacked from time to time by various unprofessional radicals, some of whom serve on boards and committees in the various schools), but to attack a journalist for being a journalist is truly the lowest of lows for Northwestern.
Lazy and dishonest
It is by no means understandable that he did this, and it is not minor at all. He did willfully deceive in this letter. That other students have said they enjoy their classes is not a valid defense for putting something in quote marks. He should know better. If it's in quotes, it is not paraphrased.
Yes it was a year ago, but emails stay much longer than that. He claims to have contacted Microsoft, but this is not relevant. He is the dean of the journalism school, so of course he was using Northwestern mail, which archives everything. So he even lied about the lack of a paper trail.
Finally, I wouldn't say that Spett's effort will make the school hold itself to a higher standard. It already had the highest standards, and as proof, people are up in arms about what he did.
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