OPINION & EDITORIAL
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Also by Mike Gendall:
- Tread lightly, Berquam (September 24, 2007)
- From the desk of the editor (August 31, 2007)
- Welcome to the Herald (August 6, 2007)
- Mayor abandons principles for power (March 28, 2007)
Related Stories:
- Thank-you Badger Herald (September 6, 2001)
- From the desk of the editor (August 8, 2005)
- Redeclaring independence (September 10, 2004)
- From the desk of the editor in chief (December 14, 2005)
- First Amendment first (March 6, 2001)
by Mike Gendall
Monday, August 6, 2007
This letter appeared in the Summer 2007 Mailhome Issue that was sent to all incoming freshmen and transfer students.
Welcome to the pages of The Badger Herald, America’s largest fully independent student newspaper.
Congratulations to all of you on your acceptance to the University of Wisconsin. Whether you realize it yet or not, you’re about to be fully immersed in one of this country’s greatest public universities — and in a college town with no rival.
Here at The Badger Herald we’ve been proud to serve the University of Wisconsin community with student journalism of the highest quality, since our founding in 1969. We are and always have been "fully" independent — our office is located off campus and we neither seek nor accept any funding from the university whatsoever. As such, all of our expenses are covered strictly by advertising revenue.
We are also an entirely student-run organization. Every person on staff, from our advertising representatives to our comics editor to the members of our Board of Directors, is, by rule, a current UW student.
We publish 16,000 newspapers a day, five days a week, throughout the academic year. Keep an eye out for our newspaper rack in the lobby of your residence hall, in most buildings on campus and at businesses and street corners in the campus area.
Before long, you’ll be settling in to your daily routine here, and it is our sincere hope that you’ll make us a part of it. If the past few years are any indication, there will be no shortage of news, sports and arts coverage worth catching up on — Madison is a hotbed for artists and musicians, more than a few of the Badger sports teams can claim to be among the best in the nation and the UW administration seems to have a knack for inserting itself into nationwide controversies.
In addition to providing you with the news that’s important, we want this to be your forum to discuss and sound off on the issues that are important to you. Wish we covered something that we didn’t? Think that guy who wrote the health care column doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Send me an e-mail at editor@badgerherald.com. We love to hear from you, and, space permitting, we try to print any thoughtful feedback and user comments from our award-winning website, badgerherald.com, in the next day’s opinion section.
As always, thanks for reading, and best of luck this fall. I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am.
Mike Gendall
Editor in Chief
Anonymous (August 19, 2007 @ 7:32pm):
Overwhelming Evidence Yields Little Press Coverage:
Since September 11, 2001 thousands of current/former military, police, fire as well as architects, engineers, phsysicists and government officials have come forward to state that the government's version of what took place on 9/11 is a lie. Given the importance of the topic and the implications therein I find the media as a whole is not only negligent but complicit in it's persistent efforts to ignore and downplay all of the voices proposing alternative theories.
By writing this letter, publishing it on my web site and including supporting materials, I am effectively denying your publication any future claims of ignorance on this subject. If you choose not to investigate this group of professionals and their message then you do so with full knowledge of their existence.
Good journalism is not a business it is a moral and ethical obligation to inform the citizenry. A strong democracy cannot flourish without a healthy media. I know journalists and editors are pressured but that does not excuse them from their civic and moral responsibilities to the people of this country. Which one of you will show the courage to uncover the ugly realities of 9/11?
9/11 Dude
http://www.911dude.com
Anonymous (August 21, 2007 @ 1:17am):
9/11 Dude, you're a wacko.
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