WISCONSIN — Officials at Milwaukee Area Technical Collegemet with student newspaper staff this week to discuss why administrators pulledthe latest issue from the printing press to proofread its content.
The issue came out on time, but students had to runadministrators’ edited version in order to make the scheduled publication date,said Sarah Aguado, editor in chief of The Times.
The paper usually takes four days to go through the printingprocess. It was turned in early last week because Times adviser Bob Hanson andseveral staff members were attending the College Media Advisers convention inLouisville, Ky. Hanson said he received an email notice at the convention thatproduction had been temporarily halted.
Al Pinckney, interim vice president of student services,said there were no bad intentions in having the paper proofread. Pinckney saidthe decision to have public relations staff proofread the paper was his, andnot that of the public relations department.
“I made that perfectly clear when I asked [collegespokeswoman Kathleen Hohl] to do the proofing — I said, ‘I don’t want you todo anything with content, this is solely to proofread for grammatical stuff,'”he said.
Pinckney said he had spoken with Hanson prior to theprinting of the latest issue about putting a plan in place to improve thegrammar of the paper, which he said had been declining. When he found no suchplan had been put in place, he asked Hohl to proofread the paper.
“When I found out that that had not been done when it was atthe printer, I asked that it be pulled until that had happened,” he said.
However, Hanson said there was miscommunication about whatwould be done.
“He and I met in the hall one day, and he mentioned theerrors and I said I was aware of it and that we were working on improving theprocess — that’s as far as it went,” he said.
Hohl said she and another proofreader did not make anydirect changes to the newspaper. She added that some of the changes did notmake it into the final version.
“We printed it out, a PDF, both of us made the marks and wehand delivered it back to [Director of Student Life] Archie Graham,” she said.
Hohl added she did not make any changes to content, and infact did not edit her own quote in a story for which she had been interviewed.They did not proofread the comics, ads, or a syndicated piece.
Hanson said when he returned from Louisville, Graham handedhim the edited pages and told him he must make the changes.
Graham was unavailable for comment before press time.
Hanson said an employee in the college printing office wouldbegin proofreading the paper, which was the normal practice prior to thissemester.
Hohl, Pinckney and Aguado met Tuesday to discuss the matter.Aguado said a long-term solution has not been decided on, and they plan to meetagain in the next few weeks.
By James Heggen, SPLC staff writer