The fifth and sixth links are from the UP editor's blog. Others are from big dailies like The Palm Beach Post and SunSentinel and national free-speech advocacy groups like FIRE and the Student Press Law Center.
Terry Mena works for Brown as the associate dean of Student Affairs. Google his name and 10 links come back – six about you-know-what.
Even Mary Jane Saunders, FAU's new president, takes a hit with the hits. Google her name, click on the "news" tab, and you get four links about the UP – and one from it. Fourth on the list is a story about Saunders closing her very first meeting to the public.
I believe Google matters more to FAU administrators than the First Amendment does. After all, they don't use the First Amendment. But they do use Google – and so will their future employers.
So it's reasonable to assume FAU leaders have backed off their threats against me and the UP staff because, at this point, the media coverage is pushing its way to the top of Google searches about them.
Since last week, FAU officials have refused to comment to any media outlet. They reckon the controversy will eventually melt away. And soon after, so will the offending Google results.
Palermo graduated from FAU two years ago. Google his name and you'll see links to various protests the communication major staged on campus.
Palermo was FAU's resident activist. He was also the UP's listings editor – the most noncontroversial job at the paper.
(I learned long ago: When you advise a newspaper at a commuter school with no formal journalism program, recruit students who are already active on campus. It doesn't matter what they're doing. At least they're not apathetic.)
Like other UP alumni, Palermo has been disgusted by FAU's attempts to control the UP. But he lives in Washington, D.C., running his own arts foundation after spending two years as an administrator at Greenpeace's national headquarters.
Now he's found his way to help the UP from afar. He's going to be a Google guerrilla.
Or as he wrote to Brown yesterday...
I'm going to launch a nationally coordinated online campaign to call on you and FAU to hire a full-time, qualified adviser for the University Press. I have over 2,000 friends (who also have friends) on an online social network that can help me spread the word – clicking the right links to ensure that any web search of "Dr. Charles Brown FAU" returns results showing how you've not only terminated a part-time advisor and educator but also left out a full-time advisor in the supposed "restructuring" of student media.
In other words, Palermo is asking everyone he knows to click on all the stories about FAU messing with the UP – over and over and over again. That will keep them at the top of any search results about Brown, Mena, and Saunders.
Palermo says he'll cease the "clicking campaign" once Student Affairs makes good on its promise to hire a full-time adviser for the UP – the stated reason for firing me in the first place.
TOMORROW: Karla confronts the search committee.
