| Subject: Ground Rules Etc |
Author:
AJ McGuire
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Date Posted: 15:03:38 05/19/02 Sun
One primary thing we’re gonna need is to make the rules of how this thing will operate be crystal clear to the readers/contributors along with the reasons behind these rules. I suggest we print them on a page in every issue as well in some form in another kind of flier. Kind of like the legal fine print but well written and concise so people will actually read it.
Some ideas for ground rules: (all quotes are nearest approximations from memory)
- Initially, editors (Jake and AJ) have supreme editorial control. This can be flexed, changed as situation develops. Although it’d be nice to have a straight up mouthpiece for anyone who wants it, there needs to be some manner of filter for the reasons below.
- All cuss words will have their vowels confiscated (ex. F^ck, @ssh0l3, etc… however it becomes easiest.) reason: avoids any hassle of being accused of distributing obscene material in a public space. The original pieces stay readable with no sacrifice of meaning and those who’d take issue have their token censorship
Kurt Vonnegut: “Swearing is a good excuse for someone to not pay attention to what you have to say”
- On the issue of hate speech: Selections will not be discluded based on POV/content but on strength of argument. Someone saying, for example, “Black people are all criminals” with no argument will be treated the same as someone just saying “The Braves Suck”. Basically, all opinions have to some sort of argued basis (determined by our discretion) or there’s really no point in printing them. Just a hassle for us, being the ones who will be perceived (wrongly but it’ll happen) as liable for what is printed.
Larry Flynt: “Freedom of Speech is about defending someone’s right to say something you hate.”
- On anonymous contributors: We should allow this, making it clear that we accept signed or unsigned contributions. Unsigned because of the understandable fear of real world retaliation outside of the simple exchange of ideas. Pretty much as discussed. But, as a measure of accountability of opinion, we should require a valid email address be submitted for reply. This can be a secondary address set up specifically for this requirement (there’s plenty of free email services, hotmail, yahoo, gtx, etc) The idea is basically that this publication is not a one way device. It is specifically made with the intent of response/discourse/conversation/exchange of ideas. Also, we should ask that all responses send a copy to us as well so we could either publish them or put them up on the website.
- Ahh, website. I figure we can do this on my webspace for the time being or get some under the name of Jake Serlen (every Ithaca student gets 10MB of space on the IC server, I’ve already and still use a bit of mine). But basically the web will allow us to do parallel publishing, reprinting what we put on paper, as well as putting up what we didn’t have room for. Not to mention allowing a quick forum for response and discussion. Message board would be ideal for this but also emailed responses I could publish on there with very little problem. Still would have the issue of some censorship due to the restrictions on speech that Ithaca has for its webspace but I imagine those aren’t too ironclad.
So get back to me on this.. respond to these items and lets get cracking on making something a lil more polished to be the ground rules for this.
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