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Letters to the Editor


I’ll be honest—I was never a huge fan of the Red & Black. I contributed a few stories, but I saw it as a stepping-stone, a means to an end, a brief pit stop on the long road of my career. But that’s because I judged it on its weakest links, not its strongest.
The Red & Black has served loyally for more than 100 years as one of the premiere launch pads for budding journalists in the Southeast. Red and Black alumni write for, work at and even lead some of the greatest publications in the country, but I’m always the first to admit, some of its content is not great. No, that’s an understatement. Some of its content is downright awful. Not everyone comes out of their high school newspaper club ready to write for an audience in the tens of thousands. Not everyone even had a high school newspaper.
For some—especially freshmen who haven’t yet stumbled through one of John Soloski’s news quizzes, or been edited to a pulp by the late, great Conrad Fink—the Red &Black is not just their first exposure to a realistic journalism environment, it’s their first exposure to journalism period. They need to fail. They need to learn—and they do.
I cannot stress enough the importance in the difference between having someone tell you your story will fail—even if they explicitly outline why it will fail—and experiencing that failure yourself. If a writer pisses people off, he needs to feel the stinging hatred in the backlash. If an editor lets a glaring error slip under her nose, she needs to know what it’s like truly dealing with the consequences. I learned from the mistakes I made at the Red & Black, and I only hope its board of directors can learn from theirs.

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