Letter to the Editor: In response to Justice Editorial
Published: October 19, 2007Section: Opinions
Dear Editor:
This week another Editor in Chief of the Justice published another editorial justifying that paper's decision to publish yet more potentially damaging information about students. It is perhaps telling that the Justice feels the need, every year or so, to passionately defend these decisions.
Arrests, controversial events, and statements made in anger are often newsworthy. And in a small, tight-knit community like Brandeis, people generally know the names of the people behind the headlines. But it is wrong for one student to decide that one bad decision or mistake by another should haunt that person for the rest of their life.
The first editorial ever published in The Hoot said it best: “We shall not be intimidated by controversy, but neither shall we sink to the level of merely titillating our readership;
our mission is to inform, to bring meaningful content into readers' lives. We are here for our readers, not for our resumes.”
I am proud to look upon a community newspaper that has flourished since I helped to found it in 2005. I am disappointed, but not surprised, to see that while The Hoot has stayed true to its mission, so has the Justice stayed true to its painful and counterproductive goal of putting notions of “journalist integrity” ahead of the community it serves.
– Daniel Silverman '05