This past week has been a hectic one, both at The Post and around campus. Much of that to-do, in both cases, has stemmed from Student Senate President Megan Marzec’s controversial “blood bucket” challenge.
The conversation has covered everything from fair student representation to free speech in the 10 days since Marzec released the video urging Ohio University to divest from Israel. We’ve been there every step of the way, providing readers what I have felt to be timely, thorough coverage of every twist and turn.
I’m proud that The Post has had the opportunity to educate readers about the conversation and cover such a hot-button issue. We have had our missteps along the way, however.
The first came when we reported on the boiling tensions at last Wednesday’s senate meeting but neglected to include the fact that students spoke in support of Marzec as well as against her. Although our report about the meeting didn’t contain factually inaccurate information, it didn’t include as many perspectives as it should have.
This week’s senate meeting coverage wasn’t without flaw either.
For one, we initially reported that five students had been arrested for interrupting the meeting. Our report was based on a reporter’s conversation with the university’s Chief of Police, who could confirm that four students were arrested and a fifth may have been as well. The reporter relayed that information to a colleague, and it got misconstrued as confirmation of five arrests by the time it hit our website.
Video footage was published on our website Wednesday was also edited in a manner that inaccurately depicted the timeline of events at the senate meeting. For example, footage of Marzec addressing the body about progress senate has made on resolutions is shown near the beginning of the 2:37 video, when, chronologically speaking, it should have been placed later in the video.
A new video has since been uploaded to our website, though the initial video has not been removed.
If these mistakes seem serious, it’s because they are. We don’t take our mistakes lightly, and readers have a right to call us out when we’re incorrect.
We continue, however, to succeed in bringing you the news that you care about most. Our senate coverage (as well as editorials and letters on the topic) comprise our top 25 pieces of web content during the past 10 days, and more readers are accessing our website than ever before. In fact, we’ve received so many letters that we couldn’t fit them all into our paper. The rest are online.
We’re glad to see readers so engaged with our content, and we have been pleased with the amount of letters we have received from readers over the past three weeks.
We’re our harshest critics, but please let us know if you think there’s something that we could do better. After all, we’re here for you.
As always, thanks for reading.
Jim Ryan is a senior studying journalism and Editor-in-Chief of The Post. Following our Student Senate coverage? Let him know what you think at jr992810@ohio.edu or on Twitter at @Jimryan015.
