Money for Nothing, Part II

The University Press editors want FAU to hike the pay – and the required experience – for the new student media adviser.

Yesterday, they formally asked student media director Marti Harvey to do just that.

The editors joked they should've asked Marti to raise the experience to 20 years – which is how long I've been a professional journalist. My first reporting job was at the Athens Banner-Herald in 1989.

Marti's resume, the one she submitted to become student media director, only lists two years of professional journalism experience (as community editor for two suburban weeklies).

Perhaps that's where the two years of pro experience on the new job posting comes from. Marti may not want an adviser with more work history than she has.

Thinking about it now, that might've sped up my firing.

For instance, in a meeting with UP editor Devin Desjarlais just last month, Marti insisted our copydesk needs to call back every source and verify every quote and every number.

I told her in all my years at daily newspapers and national magazines, I never heard of dialing up every source before publication. She replied, "When I was at The Dallas Morning News, my editor did it with my copy all the time."

I suggested as delicately as I could that this wasn't necessarily a good thing. I didn't say what I really thought: Your editors might not have trusted you. But I could tell I still ruffled her.

Marti has often boasted to me and the students that she spent two years as a sports writer at The Dallas Morning News. But it's not on her resume. At my final staff meeting last Friday, Marti was recorded saying she had been there four years. 

Yet a search of the News archives dating back to 1985 shows nothing under her full name or even "Marti."

I'm sure there's a good explanation, but I'm also sure of this conclusion: Marti is a nice person who's in over her head. This job posting will not "improve student media."

TOMORROW: Returning to the scene of the crime.