At this week's editors meeting – held in an Irish pub where the photo editor works so I wouldn't have to set foot on campus – I exhorted...
"If you feel Student Affairs isn't being candid about the decision to fire me, what else is happening at FAU that may be shady? Let's investigate."
I didn't think they'd start so close to home.
Two editors poked into the background of student media director Marti Harvey. As I mentioned yesterday, Marti has often cited her experience at The Dallas Morning News to support her edicts – declaring blog posts should never break news, for example.
When I was an FAU employee, I tried as diplomatically as possible to calm some tense meetings with Marti and the editors – yes, I was good cop. Marti would declare, "That's not journalism," and the editors would bristle. I'd say something (I hoped was) funny, and we'd move on.
Unlike the community college newspaper Marti advised previously, the UP has staff that works at major media – the SunSentinel, Palm Beach Post, and New Times. These aren't internships. They're part-time jobs.
The UP is surely as flawed as any other student newspaper, but the top editors usually have more professional experience than many of their peers (or that's what I notice when we go to conventions and meet other staffs). To counter that, Marti would often cite her Dallas Morning News experience.
So the editors were understandably curious about Marti's history. They Googled her and found nothing. Checked The Dallas Morning News website and found nothing. Finally, they called The News and found nothing. Then yesterday, they interviewed Marti.
You can read about what happened on the UP's new blog, which is covering the paper's recent weirdness. But three things stand out to me as a fellow adviser...
1. Marti told the students she wrote under the name of someone else – golf reporter Harless Wade. He died last year, so there's no way to know for sure. The students asked me about this, and I was (for once) speechless. In the mid-'80s, I freelanced for The New York Times' education editor Edward B. Fiske, but I was strictly a reporter. I fetched information he needed, and sometimes he'd publish sections of my reporting as I wrote it. I told the students that Marti may have done that, but maybe she didn't explain it clearly.
2. I suggested the students ask Marti more questions about this, but Marti refused to answer them. She said if they wanted to know more, they'd have to consult The News' HR department. I never think it's a good idea for anyone in student media to refuse comment.
3. I have very mixed feelings about this whole thing. I believe Marti may have exaggerated her experience because she's been thrown into a tough job with little support from above – and now she has no support from below. But I also hope the UP will get investigative about matters further from home. Because no one has ever won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on their own newspaper.
MONDAY: The weird stuff that happened today.
