I n the spirit of openness the Daily is always so quick to encourage, I find it worth providing a little clarity on my past experiences on campus.

For one year, I was the editor of Sketch, a journal published by a volunteer staff twice a year and partially funded by GSB. I resigned last spring, but continued efforts on the journal throughout the summer until the current issue – the one on campus this week – was ready for publication.

The need to clarify was pressed upon me because a note similar to this one explaining my resignation from Sketch was pulled from the current issue at the last moment and without my knowledge. That decision came from last year’s graduate editor, Malik Toms, who has now resigned from Sketch as well.

I have no ties to the journal, though my name does appear in the staff list as the undergraduate editor and layout designer. Sketch publishes on a somewhat delayed schedule. It is generally printed at the close of one semester, but not distributed until the beginning of the next. I was with Sketch for three years and spent my last on staff editing two publications – one released last spring and one available now.

I find it worth noting that I have resigned from Sketch because there is great room for confusion as to ties between that publication and the one you are reading now. The Iowa State Daily is in no way a part of Sketch, though some staff members are either published in both (the Daily’s photography editor, Eric Rowley, produced the cover art on the new issue of Sketch) or work for both (the Daily’s arts writer and former news reporter, Nick Wethington, is now the editor of Sketch).

The Daily will be covering the release of Sketch this week, and I want it to be clear that I am not associated with the publication and the Daily does not endorse it in any way. The omission of my editor’s note in the current issue clarified these points so that I would not have to do so in the Daily’s pages, but that decision wasn’t one I was able to be involved with, and I want readers to be as aware of my roles on each as possible.

The editorial staff members of the Daily are not bound to a policy that prohibits them from involvement with other organizations on campus or beyond. In a college environment, we work with many students who are driven to not only gain journalism experience with the Daily but also to work for university offices or to be active in student organizations.

While we are atypical in that staff members are able to work with so much freedom, we do adhere to the same standard of ethics that all news media should – in short, we address when our own editors and reporters are in the news, we avoid consulting members of the staff unless it is absolutely vital to a story, and we draw very clear lines between any dual roles staff members may have, meaning if they are involved with an organization they will never work with an article pertaining to it.

My situation is not unique. Omar Tesdell, our online editor, is also a founder of the student group Time For Peace. When covering that group, we stray from interviewing Tesdell, but also recognize his large role in the group. Daily columnists Steve Skutnik and Tim Kearns have been or are involved with GSB but are still able to provide commentary to our readers – so long as they are not touching upon GSB issues. Such a situation would violate both GSB and the Daily.

Similar scenarios arose over the years I have worked for the Daily. It is worth a quick reference to some of my other positions with campus organizations that I am no longer associated with:

I formerly served the Lectures Program as a student chairman of the Committee on Lectures, which is a funding arm of GSB. As such, I was involved in the allocation of hundreds of thousands of dollars in student fees to attract speakers to campus. I resigned from that position last February when I was appointed to be the news editor of the Daily.

I formerly worked for the Department of Residence as an Academic Resource Coordinator in Maple Hall. I resigned from that position last December when I was appointed to be the student life editor of the Daily.

I formerly served on the cabinet of the Asian Pacific American Awareness Coalition. I resigned from that position during the fall of 2000 when I began working as a copy editor and reporter for the Daily.

My role as the editor in chief of the Daily means I am not active in other organizations and have effectively removed my ties to each of these groups, as well as several others I used to work with or for. I’ve done this to minimize any potential for bias in our pages, and also to resolve perceived conflicts of interests that may have developed were the Daily’s editor also serving other organization’s interests.

The incident with Sketch stands alone as a point of confusion among Daily readers, several of which have asked me already why I am editing the Daily and moonlighting as the editor of another publication. And while Sketch is in a separate class of publications and serves a different purpose, I wanted only to take a moment to clarify that the Daily and Sketch – including their editors – are not bound to each other in any way.

I find it silly that such an announcement has to be made at all when efforts were taken to clarify in the opening pages of Sketch my exit from that staff. But I also wanted to avoid the opportunity for pitfalls if I didn’t explain my other roles on this campus as well.

So, in a sense, perhaps the deletion of my editor’s note in Sketch provided a needed opportunity for clarity and openness in the pages of the Daily.

Cavan

Reagan

is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Bellevue, Neb. He is the editor in chief of the Daily.