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