420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at 

the University of Michigan since 1890.

Committing to objectivity
T

he relationship between Americans, 
newspapers and editorial freedom is 
a tangled mess of a story, with blood 

and ink dripping slowly 
down its winding pages. 
Evidence 
suggests 
this 

story began in 1690 when 
Benjamin Harris published 
the first and only edition of 
Publick Occurrences Both 
Forreign and Domestick, 
in the then-colonial town 
of Boston. The publication 
was shut down by British 
authorities a mere four days 
after its initial installment 
for failing to obtain a pub-
lishing license from the government.

The next American newspaper wasn’t print-

ed until years later when, in 1704, the governor 
approved The Boston News-Letter, which was 
heavily subsidized and censored by the Brit-
ish government. Successive colonial papers 
received the same treatment, with several edi-
tors and publishers jailed when authorities did 
not agree with their views. 

Of course, that all changed in 1765 when colo-

nial residents finally decided to act against the 
dictator-like presence of the British, starting a 
revolution that was heard around the world.

During that time, America’s founding fathers 

instituted the Bill of Rights, with the First 
Amendment reading as follows: “Congress shall 
make no law respecting an establishment of 
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise there-
of; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of 
the press; or the right of the people peaceably 
to assemble, and to petition the Government for 
a redress of grievances” (emphasis mine).

Thereafter, media in the United States was 

subject to censorship only through the lens of 
our first amendment; strict government cen-
sorship became a thing of older times or of 
other nations.

With the spirit of a free press still fresh in the 

minds of citizens, the initial staff of The Michi-
gan Daily printed its first edition on Sept. 29, 
1890. Since that day, the Daily has remained edi-
torially independent from all outside influences, 
including (and especially) the University.

But without any external influence, how do 

you decide what stories to report and how to 
frame them? And how have those people’s deci-
sions in the past affected their successors who 
make similar editorial decisions today?

The evolution of newspapers and journalism 

has come a long way. As the sensationalism that 
filled the pages of the Penny Press decreased, 
journalists began to focus more on facts and 
objectivity. During the early 19th century, so 
called “news” and “editorial commentary” were 
often mixed together within one article, giving 
readers a sense of how the writers felt about cer-
tain topics and why they felt that way. Toward 
the end of the 19th century and the beginning of 
the 20th, journalism became a prestigious career 
with a code of ethics to follow.

The first rule? Objectivity.
Today, objectivity is the goal most journal-

ists strive toward when reporting the facts to 
the public. The Society of Professional Jour-
nalists stresses objectivity and other journal-
istic ethics in its code of ethics, which is well 
known by reporters across the nation.

With the evolution of objectivity came the 

natural separation of “news” and “editorial” 
pages. News reporters were striving for objec-
tive reporting when relaying facts to the public, 
while editors from the opinion section wrote 
stories in a purposefully unobjective format. 

At the Daily, a complete separation between 

the incompatible sections didn’t happen until 
the early 1990s. In an interview with the Daily, 
David Schwartz, a former news reporter turned 
editorial page editor (February 1990-January 
1991) noted, “There was a tension during my 

first couple years of the paper between those 
of us who thought journalism should be about 
objectively reporting the news and others who 
thought there’s no such thing as being objective. 
(The idea was that) everyone has their biases, 
and we might as well own up to what our biases 
are, and have the entire paper — including the 
news section — be activist.”

During that time, all Daily staffers were 

allowed to become editorial board members, 
potentially creating a conflict of interest with 
regard to objective news reporting. Schwartz 
and several other staffers disagreed with the 
sentiment that the entire newspaper should be 
activist. Objectivity was a goal reporters around 
the globe were working toward, and the Daily 
was not about to be left behind in the world of 
journalism. Eventually, during the 1990 editor 
elections, objectivity won and activism was 
reserved solely for the Opinion section; the 
News section would stick to reporting the news 
without clear social and political biases.

With the roles of each section agreed upon, 

the Daily’s editorial page began focusing on 
issues in which they could actually create a 
lasting effect. 1995-1996 Editorial Page Edi-
tor Julie Becker said in an interview with my 
co-EPE, Derek Wolfe, “One of the things that 
we really tried to do was move away from 
talking, especially about international issues, 
but also about national and domestic, because 
not only were they not going to be solved on 
the pages of the Daily, but we were not the 
most qualified people to be writing about that 
sort of thing.”

By refocusing with a narrowed lens on 

the University community, the Opinion page 
transformed into more than just a group of 
students whining about news well beyond 
the scope of Ann Arbor. With both University 
officials and students reading our thoughts 
through a critical lens, editorials became 
wired with facts and reporting of our own. 

“It was very good for me to really have to 

defend my positions and really think about 
what my opinions were and why they were 
what they were and learn to support them 
with facts,” mentioned Becker while talking 
about what the Opinion page taught her.

I first joined the Daily’s Opinion page dur-

ing my sophomore year of college. As a newbie, 
I never quite realized how much journalistic 
skill goes into writing factually accurate and 
poignant arguments. My time as an assis-
tant editor, then senior editor, then editorial 
page editor has taught me that there’s more to 
opinion writing than just letting others know 
what you think. You have to show your audi-
ence why your ideas are the right ideas. It’s 
like writing an argumentative essay for thou-
sands of professors who are sometimes cruel 
and unjust.

And while much of the criticism toward 

the Opinion page is directed toward the Daily 
in general, the Opinion staff and editors often 
face the weight of their decisions alone.

“We don’t have a professional staff of jour-

nalists around trying to sort through that 
stuff, so we all had to do it ourselves and 
teach each other, which I think increases the 
pressure on you, the sense of consequence for 
failure, the fear that you’re doing it wrong. 
It all weighs on you really heavily,” Stephen 
Henderson, 1991-1992 editorial page editor 
and current editorial page editor of the Detroit 
Free Press, noted in an interview. 

Yet we bear the weight and continue to com-

ment on stories that our staff deem important on 
campus. The losses are remembered as lessons 
and the wins as prideful memories. It’s a constant 
struggle of reflection and analysis, but it’s a strug-
gle with which the Opinion staff will forever — 
gladly — remain entangled.

— Aarica Marsh can be reached 

at aaricama@umich.edu.

OPINION

Tuesday, September 29, 2015
The Michigan Daily
michigandaily.com

8A

AARICA 
MARSH

The purpose of the Opinion page
I

n the time I’ve been on the Dai-
ly’s Opinion staff, I’ve noticed 
something: This campus has a 

lot of opinions 
and no shortage 
of people who 
want to share 
them.

It’s been that 

way for the last 
125 years, and 
that trend shows 
no sign of slow-
ing — just look at 
my e-mail inbox. 
That 
reality, 

though, has left 
the Daily’s Opinion page having to 
deal with serious questions about its 
purpose.

“Is the Daily a forum for all? Or is 

it a controlled forum?” Julie Becker, 
who was editorial page editor from 
1995-1996, asked when we spoke in 
early September. “And if it’s con-
trolled, who are we to be controlling 
it, and what are the standards by 
which we’re going to control it?”

And as Stephen Henderson, the 

editorial page editor of the Detroit 
Free Press who served as the Daily’s 
EPE from 1991-1992, told me, “It’s 
said (the Opinion page) serves two 
purposes: one is to advocate for the 
positions the institution holds and 
is trying to advance, but the other 
is to provide a place for everybody, 
and especially for opposing points of 
view, to get some air time.”

That said, I think it’s important 

to recognize what David Schwartz, 
who was EPE from 1990-1991, told 
me when I spoke with him. He men-
tioned how many issues like the 
Arab-Israeli conflict aren’t going to 
be solved on the pages of the Daily 
and effectively said the Opinion 
page, in many cases, is just a place to 
be heard.

As the current editorial page edi-

tor, I grapple with the questions and 
comments from Becker, Henderson 
and Schwartz every day. Most of the 
time, those questions are answered 
for us; we don’t have enough content 
for the day, so we run what we have. 
But other times, we have to make a 
choice. If we received two or three 
pieces on sexual assault, the BDS 
movement or wealth inequality, how 

do we reasonably pick what is fit to 
print? How do we make sure those 
opposing points of view get the page 
space they deserve? And if we have 
to pick one person’s point of view 
over another’s, does that imply the 
opinion we choose is more impor-
tant than another one?

While often times we go with the 

piece that is the most “grammati-
cally correct” or “well-written,” in 
many ways, we are ranking views, 
and that makes me uncomfortable. 
Perhaps even more uncomfortable 
than choosing individual pieces 
to publish is when we hire colum-
nists each semester. We get more 
applicants than there are spots, and 
choosing who gets to write about 
mental health or environmental 
issues or politics can be as difficult 
or more difficult than choosing 
opinions to publish from issue to 
issue.

Of course, there are also logistical 

factors that play into these decisions, 
like space on the page and the time 
we have to make these decisions. But 
the point remains the same: not all 
people and issues on campus, minus 
bigots, get the recognition they need 
or deserve.

Activism on campus comes in 

all shapes and sizes, and I’m will-
ing to bet that many, if not all, past 
EPEs desperately want the Daily to 
be a go-to space for activists to voice 
their opinions on issues they feel 
strongly about. Henderson spoke to 
this point when I talked with him in 
early September.

“That part of the job (receiving 

submissions from campus groups) 
was at least as much work and took 
as much thought as the editorial 
part of the job did, because you had 
these deeply passionate groups and 
individuals. And deeply passionate 
about very serious issues,” Hender-
son said. “The stuff that they were 
talking about … was big stuff. It 
wasn’t little things. And so there was 
a lot of pressure, I felt, to handle all 
that in a sophisticated and fair way 
at a pretty young age, when I had no 
previous experience doing it.”

I certainly feel that pressure, 

which seems to boil down to one 
question: How do you balance 
between wanting to produce a high-

quality newspaper with the best 
writers and the need to present 
diverse viewpoints? 

To me, that is a battle every opin-

ion page will fight indefinitely. I see 
it as my role as EPE to work with 
groups to meet in the middle; I want 
to get their writing to a point where 
it is acceptable for our publication. 
This takes time and effort, but it’s 
important work.

Arching over all of this, though, is 

what Schwartz said: Issues don’t get 
solved on the Opinion page. Home-
lessness in Ann Arbor was being 
written about 25 years ago, and it’s 
still an issue. Sexual assault was a 
relevant topic in the early 1990s, 
and it’s even more so now. The same 
goes for institutional racism at the 
University. The administration con-
tinuously fails to listen to students, 
and that leaves many frustrated.

As Schwartz puts it, “I think that 

the dynamic is the same between 
activist students and an adminis-
tration that is often much slower to 
adapt or to change than the students 
would like. I think that’s likely to be 
true of the U of M going back to the 
’60s and going forward from here.”

To me, what Schwartz is saying 

is all the more reason to maintain 
a vibrant, expansive opinion page. 
Though the issues themselves may 
not be solved in print, the voices 
fighting, explaining or advocating 
for these issues matter. Submitting 
a viewpoint or writing a column is 
an exclamation of the statement, “I 
am here and I matter.” Because of 
the Daily’s rather large audience, I 
feel an immense responsibility to 
give people that chance to announce 
their presence. Even though ques-
tions regarding how to do so must 
be wrestled with continuously, the 
Daily has been a place for sharing 
voices for the past 125 years, and 
will continue to serve that role in 
the future.

The Opinion page is a place to 

say that we, the students of the Uni-
versity of Michigan, care about the 
world around us and will keep fight-
ing the good fight — whatever that 
fight may be.

— Derek Wolfe can be reached 

at dewolfe@umich.edu.

DEREK
WOLFE

Published 11/4/2008

Published 10/20/1976

Published 10/4/1984
Published 9/12/2000

