While I very much enjoy my job as the Entertainment Editor, being an editor at the Technique is an extremely thankless job.
I love walking into a restaurant for lunch in Tech Square on a Friday afternoon and seeing a person or two reading the paper. They are not reading it because they are in class and would rather read slivers than pay attention; they are usually reading it because they want to. That’s really all the thanks I need for doing my job…that and a little bit of respect.
As a journalist—even a student journalist—I expect just as much from the work I do here as the student body. You, the reader, expect us at The Technique to provide true, unbiased information. It is our job as a publication.
It is understandable when a student becomes upset when the information we provide in an article (or photo caption) is incorrect. But when a student submits a letter to the editor that insults the intelligence of our editors and calls our abilities as writers “inept” and “ignorant,” it is rather upsetting and quite frankly, insulting.
When I first read this letter to the editor a few weeks ago when a student was upset about us reporting a photo incorrectly, I was extremely angry. However, after thinking about this for two weeks before it was time for me to write my editorial, I realized that this letter seemed to reflect poorly on the submitter of the letter more so than it did on The Technique.
As an editor and writer, I can say that The Technique would never attack an athlete or a member of any other organization in this way. We would never allow a comment about a person being incompetent to be published in our paper.
Georgia Tech is home to many amazing athletes, teams and organizations. If a team loses a game, we will not write that the team should obviously not be playing their sport. We will not degrade a team for one failure. Everyone makes mistakes. We do not expect absolute perfection from our sports teams.
All I ask is that you do the same for the Technique. We, like you, are just students who spend hours upon hours every week to create something that students will hopefully enjoy. We spend a great deal of time looking over articles. A number of different people read over the paper and look through the pictures and tweak the headlines. You might even say that we have many “practices” before “playing a game” (when an issue publishes). But like everyone else, we make mistakes.
Baseball players do not always hit home runs. Swimmers do not always win their race when they are swimming their best stroke. Football players do not score touchdowns on every drive. I do not expect them to do so. Likewise, The Technique does not always get every piece of information correctly. We are not perfect.
Quite honestly, after staring at a computer screen for ten hours to get the Entertainment section put together, my mind becomes pretty tired. I’m sure after swimming three races or running all of the bases or running from end zone to end zone, your body also gets pretty tired. Your performance might even weaken slightly. This is to be expected.
We do not get our pictures in the paper every week and we do not get stories written about our organization and events. So not only is our job very thankless, but we are often insulted for our opinions and errors. It is especially upsetting because we would never do that to another student or organization.
It is not my intention to insult or anger anyone. I am not trying to start anything. All that I am trying to do is make people realize that we are also people.
We are also students. We also have weeks when we have three tests within a span of three days. Many of us are also involved in other campus organizations. Some of us, like myself, even have a second job.
All I ask is for a little understanding, and maybe even a little respect.
While we do receive many kind and concerned letters to the editor, those few that are outright rude and debasing really get to me. We are all Tech students. We all have that in common. I hope that more people realize that we all have a great deal of things going on in our lives. It just seems a little unfair to respect such a high level of perfection from a college newspaper.
The Technique staff is made up of INTA majors, Chemistry majors, Computer Science majors and Engineering majors (like myself). Most of us will not go on to work for other publications. Without the people that make up the Technique, your organization or event would not make it into the paper at all.