As a graduate of Iowa State University with a degree in journalism, a former staff member of the Iowa State Daily, and a professional journalist, I generally look with favor on the Daily.

As a former member of the Daily staff, I understand fully the value of what you do and why you do it. You are taking what you learn in the classrooms and ISU’s great journalism faculty and applying it to the real world.

As writers for a college newspaper, however, you are also prone to making some pretty juvenile mistakes. Longtime observers of the Daily will remember an infamous column written some years ago about the women of Iowa State that drew a firestorm of negative reaction. Mistakes are not new at the Daily, and the mistakes you make now will not be the last; even as you move out into the world of professional journalism.

It is important for you at the Daily to learn from your mistakes. And recently, you’ve made a couple of whoppers. Clearly, you miscalculated the value of printing the Kenny Pratt transcript. As college journalists, you have a great deal more leeway than than professional journalists who have to answer to paying subscribers. Still, responsibility to your readers is paramount.

While I’m sure your April 16 issue was probably the most well read of the year, “selling” papers shouldn’t be your first and only concern.

Your next big mistake, which has been alluded to in other letters to the editor, was the tremendous lack of sensitivity in your headline which declared that Veishea had few hitches, the “slaying aside.”

I hope that the people who wrote and then approved that headline think long and hard about that particular decision.

Working at the Daily is a great learning experience, and between work there and at The Daily Tribune, I learned a great deal. I also learned that responsibility goes hand-in-hand with reporting the news.

Here’s hoping that today’s Daily staff members take these recent errors in judgment as valuable lessons in life. Given the recent content of your opinion page, I’m sure you are already starting to realize that.

Craig T. Neises

Monticello, Iowa

Iowa State University Class of 1992 – JLMC