The Newsroom — February 20, 2009
Why we published 'Put down your beer and volunteer'
For better or worse, we see The Maneater's Forum section as a place for candid conversation and freedom from censorship. We present the majority opinion of our editorial board on campus issues and offer a free forum for MU students and others to share their thoughts, and we also hire six columnists to share their opinions.
Our columnists are selected after they submit sample two columns, and The Maneater's editorial board votes to select six. We give preference given to those applicants who tackle campus issues and who show strong writing. Once our columnists have been hired, we generally edit for length and style, not for content. As our Forum page states, the opinions expressed in columns and cartoons don't necessarily reflect the opinion of The Maneater's editorial board.
This policy has gotten us in trouble before. In 2006, The Maneater ran a number of letters to the editor protesting one of columnist Dan Friesen's 2007 columns. In fact, we added a page to the Forum section to accommodate the extra letters.
At press time, we had received 18 letters from students protesting Sean Nahlik's column from Monday's edition of The Maneater. We have again expanded our Forum section to accommodate more of those responses, and they will all run online.
I'm glad to see the response. We don't intend these columns or the opinions expressed in our editorials to go uncontested. Today we also have two letters from people who disagree with our editorial stance against concealed carry on campus, also from Monday's issue of The Maneater. And we've made it as easy as possible to respond. In January, we introduced a link next to every story to submit a letter to the editor.
I hope you'll continue to tell us and our columnists when we've got it wrong. Our goal is to start a conversation, and that conversation is certainly going strong today.
If you are outraged by the content of this opinion page, I would also encourage you to check back to themaneater.com at the end of the semester, when we will release applications for next year's columnist positions. Each applicant must submit two sample columns. If hired, you would be responsible for one 600-word column every week, and we pay $10 per column.
