In her column Friday, April 26, Maddie Laplante-Dube called "heartbreaking . . . the way some news organizations have begun to fail us."
I feel that way about The Miami Student this year. On the front page of that same issue was "A Retraction and Apology" for printing "The Baron of Brick Street" on April 21. Because of shoddy reporting and ethical breaches, The Miami Student could no longer stand behind the piece. I applaud Editor-in-Chief Reis Thebault for the retraction.
Still, I recall an issue this year in which a Miami Student reporter was linked to articles that had been plagiarized from other publications. Last fall The Miami Student published an inflammatory letter to the editor that made broad generalizations about Miami's international students. The letter was said to be from a faculty member who wished to remain anonymous, which I understood. What I didn't understand was that The Miami Student published the letter without anyone on the staff knowing the identity of the writer.
Last fall a profile appeared in The Miami Student about one of our beloved Oxford coffee shops, Kofenya. I was glad to see this piece about a thriving, community friendly business founded in 2004 by two Miami seniors. I was, however, puzzled that the co-owner who was quoted extensively hadn't been associated with Kofenya in five years. Had the bulk of that article been cribbed from another one in The Miami Student years before? What kind of lazy journalism was going on?
As the oldest university newspaper in America (established in 1826), The Miami Student needs to do much better in reporting and upholding ethical journalistic standards. Students, faculty, staff and citizens of Oxford rely on The Miami Student for news of the university and community. Citizens can't look to The Oxford Press anymore for such news. The publication is a mere four pages, a shadow of the once vibrant small-town newspaper it was decades ago.
We need a well-written, accurate university newspaper that publishes articles that are interesting, timely and stirring. I encourage The Miami Student to reclaim high ethical standards of journalism and reporting. Your readers depend on it.
Tom Romano
romanots@miamioh.edu