If you read our paper yesterday, you might have seen a young President Gutmann gracing our front page and a letter by her on our opinion page, responding to a critique from Tuesday’s paper.
Enough readers have expressed their suspicions about our paper’s objectivity that we want to clarify our position.
On Sunday, our news editors set out their schedules for the week’s stories. Some reporters had been interviewing their sources for weeks.
Separate from that process, our opinion editor received professor Charles’ et. al. column on Monday and chose to slate it for Wednesday, trying to keep it as closely timed as possible to Steve Fluharty’s appointment and still fit what he had scheduled for that week too.
That’s not to say we didn’t make considerations. What if we published the Holocaust story the day after Gutmann’s letter instead of the day of or held it for even longer? Would that clear things up for our readers?
We decided holding a news story simply because a news story and an opinion piece are about the same person becomes impractical. Holding the story would have allowed our opinion section to alter our news coverage.
In coincidences like these, we aim to stay true to our news principles and communicate our decisions to you.
Jennifer Sun is the Executive Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian and can be reached at sun@thedp.com.
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