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Issue of ''The Tartan'' from the 1980s
'''The Tartan''', formerly known as ''The Carnegie Tartan'', is the original student newspaper of Carnegie Mellon University. Publishing since 1906, it is one of Carnegie Mellon's largest and oldest student organizations. It currently has over 170 student members, who contribute on a weekly basis. It is funded by advertisements and the university's student activities fee.
Sections
There are two sections in ''The Tartan''. One is a standard broadsheet news section and the other is an entertainment, arts, and living tabloid section called Pillbox.
News
The News section consists of the front page and two or three other pages of timely, campus-focused content covering events, accomplishments and disappointments of the student body. The section's semi-regular features include news analysis, personality profiles, investigative reporting, and trend reporting. Its regular features include columns from the student body president and the Publisher (formerly "executive officer") of ''The Tartan'', featured photographs of campus events, and a weekly dose of topical statistics.
Forum
The Forum section is where Carnegie Mellon's campus discusses current issues. It contains letters to the editor, a semi-regular column by the newspaper's ombudsman, op-ed pieces, a "Presidential Perspectives" column by the university's Student Body President, and articles from the campus community. It also contains one or more editorial pieces that are the general opinion of the Editorial Staff.
Science & Technology
This section is relatively new to the newspaper. It covers the school's many achievements in the fields of robotics, computer science, biology, physics, and other fields, as well as lectures and events with a technology or science slant. As Carnegie Mellon is a research university, ''The Tartan's'' "SciTech" section holds a special significance to the newspaper's total university coverage. Envisioned in 2000, the SciTech section originally ran on alternate weeks with a Business section. However, in 2003 the Business section was discontinued and SciTech became a weekly section of the newspaper.
Sports
This section covers the weekly games, home and away, of Carnegie Mellon's sports teams, including intramural ones. Its features include analysis of professional sports leagues, commentaries, and a schedule of upcoming games and events.
Pillbox
'Pillbox' is ''The Tartan'' 's arts, living, and entertainment section. As an insert accompanying the broadsheet, it has its own comics editor in addition to a section editor. Pillbox covers the latest restaurant openings in the Oakland, Shadyside, and Squirrel Hill neighborhoods, on-campus concerts, dramatic performances, and organizations. It also contains music and movie reviews, and larger feature articles that encompass a greater scope.
The second section of the paper has undergone several iterations, especially in the past 15 years. In the 80s the subsections included Features and Diversions. Features contained information on student living, campus life, and city life. Diversions focused specifically on Arts and Entertainment. At this time the second section was also a broadsheet.
In 2000, as part of the newspaper's redesign several changes were made. Since the lines between Features and Diversions were already blurred, they were merged into an Arts and Living Section. SciTech and Business made up another subsection. Eventually Business was discontinued, and Arts and Living became a tabloid section, Pillbox.
Comics
There is a comics section in Pillbox, with many student-drawn comics and a few syndicated comics.
Staff
The staff of ''The Tartan'' comprises two major levels, the Editorial Staff and regular staff.
Editorial Staff
The Editorial Staff constitutes the core of ''The Tartan's contributors, making decisions about the articles, photographs, and art pieces submitted by the regular staff. The Editorial Staff is divided into editors and managers. Editors deal directly with the assigning, production, and processing of content, while managers coordinate their staffs to provide a service to the publication.
As a general rule, people are voted into the edstaff by their peers.
Editorial Board
The Editorial Board is a subgroup of the Editorial Staff, charged with formulating and communicating the newspaper's formal opinion every week. Each issue contains two editorials, marked "From the Editorial Board," both of which are written by Editorial Board members and vetted by the entire Board before publication. The Board is appointed by the Editor-in-Chief and approved by a majority vote of the Editorial Staff.
Regular Staff
When a student first joins the newspaper as a writer, he or she is considered a junior staffwriter. After contributing to six issues or having two published articles in each of two separate sections, the student becomes a full staffwriter. After a year of regular contribution, the staffwriter is eligible to become a senior staffwriter (a position which confers no tangible benefits, but senior staff do get their names in the masthead each week).
Recent Events
A Brief Independence: 2002–2004
In 2002, ''The Tartan's leadership decided to leave the student funding process of Carnegie Mellon University. Brad Grantz, Editor-in-Chief at the time, believed that the newspaper needed to be independent so its mission could grow. Advertising revenues were running high during the dot.com boom and overly optimistic projections led the paper to think it could be self-financing. Breaking away was also an attempt to remove the ethical burden of reporting on the same entities that allocated funds to the newspaper. The move eventually led to a massive accumulation of debt - over $100,000 by 2004. ''The Tartan'' rejoined the student funding process in the spring of 2004.
The "Natrat": April 2004
''The Tartan'' has traditionally published an annual joke issue called the "Natrat" (''Tartan'' spelled backwards) on April Fool's Day. In the 2004 edition, a comic containing racist material, along with other items deemed offensive by much of the community, was published. The ensuing media attention and campus outcry[1][2] forced the editor-in-chief and the managing editor to resign. The artist of the offending cartoon was also dismissed from the newspaper. [3]
The organization chose an outsider as its new editor-in-chief, electing Mark Egerman, a campus leader who had only previously worked for the newspaper briefly in his first semester at the university.
The paper ran its first subsequent April Fool's edition in Spring, 2006. Its title was changed to "The Tartan: Annual Scandal Issue", a name for the parody ''Tartan'' edition that was last used in 1933.
Ad Refusal: November 2004
In November of 2004, ''The Tartan's executive officer, Mark Egerman, declined to run an advertisement submitted by conservative writer David Horowitz. Horowitz has gained publicity by placing or attempting to place similar ads in a number of student newspapers across the country. Horowitz's ads have been rejected by The Tartan almost every year since at least 1996. In previous years the ads insinuated Holocaust denials. In this case the ad was for Horowitz's book "Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left." Egerman chose not only to censor the advertisement, but to publish his own statement on why he made that decision in the exact same space. While a small number of university newspapers declined to run the advertisement, none took as direct an approach as ''The Tartan''.
This action caused ''The Tartan'' to once again gain media attention, this time drawing fire from conservatives who viewed the paper as having a liberal agenda.[4][5]
Egerman was singled out by the ''Pittsburgh Tribune-Review'' for criticism.[6] He turned around and accused the ''Pittsburgh Tribune-Review'' of violating journalistic ethics by defending Horowitz, whose chief funder Richard Mellon Scaife is the publisher of the ''Tribune-Review''.[7] Not only did the ''Tribune-Review'' fail to disclose any conflict of interest, but selectively edited Egerman's letter to the editor and removed all references to Richard Mellon Scaife.
An impromptu debate between Horowitz and Egerman occurred in January 2005, when Horowitz was interviewed by Carnegie Mellon's student-run radio station WRCT. Invited to speak by one of the station's conservative political shows, Horowitz attacked Egerman, describing him as a "vulgar Marxist" for being so concerned with the source of Horowitz's funding. Egerman called in to defend himself and refused to apologize or back down from his decision. Given the chance to direct his concerns directly to the editor, Horowitz claimed that the Tartan opposed free speech and asked for an apology. Egerman vehemently insisted that freedom of speech protected the independence of a small newspaper to make decisions that it thought was best for the newspaper. The debate ended with Egerman flatly telling Horowitz that if he wanted to publish an inflammatory ad, he should feel free to do so in his own publication, FrontPage_Magazine, instead of bullying around a small university newspaper with limited resources that had sought to explain its editorial decisions in the fairest way possible. While both participants were clearly unprepared for this encounter, Egerman was successful in cementing support for The Tartan through determined resistance in the face of a better endowed opponent. The 20 minute debate was briefly placed online by WRCT until Horowitz's attorneys demanded it be removed.
References
1. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04095/295991.stm
2. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04098/297374.stm
3. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04254/376625.stm
4. http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/archive/2005/January2005/CMUnewspaperrejectsadtribunereview010505.htm
5. http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/politics/10507192.htm
6. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/archive/s_287650.html
7. http://www.thetartan.org/2005/1/17/forum/journalisticintegrityseeminglyoptional
External links
★ ''The Tartan''
★ ''ScheduleMan''
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