No strings attached: Anniversary highlights power, importance of independence

In a Wegmans produce aisle in October 2008, Melanie Hicken (News Editor, Class of ‘09) received a sealed packet from an anonymous source. The packet’s contents revealed Syracuse University’s intentions to force David Potter, a College of Arts Sciences associate dean, to resign and sign a confidentiality agreement.

Hicken walked to the parking lot, dialed Potter’s number and reached him at home.

‘I don’t want to want to talk about this on the phone. Why don’t you come over?’ Potter said.

That night, Hicken talked to Potter for an hour at his Fayetteville, N.Y., home. She filed a story on Potter that night, and the story ran stripped across the front page the next day.

‘It was really exciting and exhilarating because it all happened really quickly,’ Hicken said recently. ‘I felt like I had broken a really important story.’

And because of The D.O.’s independence, Hicken reported the story and the paper published it without fear of reprisals.

After nearly 40 years of editorial independence and 20 years of complete financial independence, The D.O. exists as the single loudest whistle-blower on campus. This sort of independence exists for few college publications. In 1991, less than 1 percent of college newspapers were independent, said Logan Aimone, executive director of the National Scholastic Press Association. Even today, you can count financially and editorially independent college papers on a few hands, Aimone said.

Importantly, the power derived from this independence endows The D.O. with the ability to publish stories on situations like Potter’s forced resignation, to send reporters to New York City soon after 9/11, to report on SU’s financial position and to learn from mistakes.

Tiffany Lankes (Editor-in-Chief, Class of ‘03) recalled when The D.O. sent reporters and photographers to New York City the day of the Sept. 11 attacks, as soon as it happened.

‘I don’t think, if we were university-run, they would have paid for that or taken the risk of sending people to New York City,’ Lankes said.

Some spent a week there, in the mix with national media outlets. The D.O. ran stories about SU students trying to find family members, and people filling a wall with photographs of missing loved ones.

During her tenure, Lankes said, the newspaper covered a fraternity brawl on university property that sent a student to the hospital in a coma. The staff ran critical stories about the Student Association giving a disproportionate amount of power and funding to University Union, the entertainment programming organization.

In 2003, the university threatened The D.O.’s right to distribute on campus, or even rent the university-owned house at 744 Ostrom Ave.

‘There’s obviously a degree of discomfort that the university has with an independent newspaper, that it would go there,’ Lankes said.

Before the brawls and 9/11, SU faced bleak economic times in the early 1990s. In 1991, Kenneth ‘Buzz’ Shaw became chancellor. To fix the situation, he cut back, consolidated colleges, and commissioned special studies and reports.

And each time Shaw released information about his policies, he would send an envelope with the details to The D.O. at 5 p.m. The next day, Shaw would release the information to other Syracuse media.

‘We were able to cover these things in a way that other media didn’t get to cover it. Part of that was because we were aggressive and not constrained by advisers or anything like that,’ said Roy Gutterman (News Editor, Class of ’93), who now works as the director of SU’s Tully Center for Free Speech.

Gutterman still can’t figure out why Shaw released the information to The D.O. a day before the other media. ‘I don’t know if he liked us or not. I think he recognized that The D.O. had an important role in disseminating information,’ Gutterman said.

Looking at past coverage, independence also allows The D.O. to learn from its mistakes. Justin Young (Editor-in-Chief, Class of ‘05) said he thinks one of the most important aspects of The D.O.’s independence is the fact that students have the opportunity to be the chief operating officer of a half-a-million dollar, not non-for-profit organization as a college student. The independence offers students the opportunity to stand on their own feet, allowing them to solve their own problems and explore issues without barriers.

In Young’s three years working in-house at The D.O, staff members faced the Brian Shaw case, the murder of an SU student delivery boy and a new chancellor. They also took heat for publishing what some considered racist and offensive comics. The paper’s independence allowed the paper to remain alive, while university-owned media outlets probably would have been shut down. The independent status forced the staff to take responsibility for the material.

‘I think a good example is just looking through The D.O.’s history with the racist comics and what happened with those consequences in comparison to what happened to HillTV and those consequences,’ Young said. ‘We were able to weather the storm, but the university just shut the entire TV station down, that day.’

The staff held public discussions with groups the comics upset and faced student protesters and angry faculty members. But those challenges shaped the contours of The D.O.’s future. 

This is what separates The D.O. from other campus media outlets. Young believes that even in the worst of times, the paper’s place on the SU campus goes unchallenged because of its independence.

Said Young, ‘They wouldn’t shut down The D.O. without first taking a very serious look at the situation.’

— Reported and written by current News Editor Beckie Strum (Class of ’12), Shayna Meliker (News Editor, Class of ‘11), Kelly Outram (Feature Editor, Class of ‘11) and Abram Brown (Asst. News Editor, Class of ‘11).