All The News I Need

boom@cc.usu.edu

To the editor:When attending volleyball and football games this fall, I’ve noticed banners for The Statesman. On them are the words, “All the news you need.” I find this untrue, and here’s a couple reasons for that:

A few weeks ago, The Statesman had a front page headline that read “Deans Step Down”. It sat above an article about a nationwide search for four deans. No mention was made in the article of a dean stepping down. I felt like I “needed” more. Fortunately I didn’t, thanks to another newspaper. Weeks before, I read an article in The Salt Lake Tribune with a similar headline, only the story that followed actually explained that three USU deans were stepping down, and even gave some insight as to why.

More recently, this last Monday, I read an article in The Statesman’s “Campus News Briefs” section that appeared to have been cut and pasted from a USU media release. It explained that there was a dispute between the LDS Church and the USU Library’s Special Collections department. This is a story that had been making headlines across the state over the past week, yet in the newspaper of the institution where this dispute is taking place, all it gets is a couple paragraphs.

Does The Statesman feel that we don’t “need” very much news, or does it simply have trouble getting the news? If the latter is true, then perhaps The Statesman should stop paying to have Rob Flygar announce at every football game that “USU students turn to the Utah Statesman for all the news they need.” and use that money to pay someone to read the real newspapers every day so The Statesman can get all the news it needs. That way, it would only be days behind instead of weeks! That, or just change the banners to read “All the truncated late news you need.”

While I’m writing this, there’s something I’m curious about. When are we going to see The Statesman’s once-a-semester front page story about pornography and how it is most definitely not an issue at USU?

Solon M. Boomer-Jenks528-87-0470boom@cc.usu.edu713-6922