First off, I need to clarify a point.

On Friday I wrote a front page story that told about a rally at Beardshear Hall.

The featured speaker at the rally was Dr. George Jackson, who is the president of the Ames chapter of the NAACP.

However, those who read the story may have noticed that I listed Dr. Jackson as being the chapter president of the NCAA, which obviously is quite different from his true title.

I don’t know if I had college sports on my mind or if I was just asleep when I wrote the story, but it seems to be one of those little mistakes that only a journalist could make.

My sincere apologies go out to those who organized and attended the rally, and especially to Dr. Jackson.

From apologies, I’ll move on to congratulations. Daily photo editor Mike Faas was named college photographer of the year over the weekend by the Iowa Press Photographers Association. Coming in with second-place honors was Daily staff photographer Michael King.

It seems the entire state’s found out what we here at the Daily have known for a long time — that we have some of the best photographers in the state working for us.

Many of you may have read a guest column last week by Rusty Poehner, the Maintenance Shop coordinator. Rusty was quite upset with the Daily’s coverage — or more specifically, lack of coverage — of the M-Shop.

She raised many good points. The Daily has missed some very prominent shows recently. And yes, we do give coverage to some entertainment events that take place in Des Moines.

But then she goes on to say that the “Daily is curiously devoid of M-Shop articles, while my office is overflowing with clippings from” many other area publications.

On top of the 11 bands that we’ve covered at the M-Shop over the past 2 1/2 months, the Daily has also covered each of the Word Up! events held at the M-Shop this semester.

We have also covered the ever popular Mighty Monkey Power Hour, which takes place in the M-Shop. And we’ve also had coverage of some of the films, debates and forums that the M-Shop schedules regularly.

True, the Daily has not covered all the events that occur at the M-Shop, but devoid of M-Shop news, the Daily is not.

We find the M-Shop to be an important part of our arts and entertainment coverage area — important enough that we’ve devoted a reporter, Corey Moss, whose only job is to cover the M-Shop.

But we have taken Rusty’s complaints to heart, and we’ve taken a close look at the coverage that we have and haven’t given to the M-Shop.

We hope the next time Rusty writes us, it will be with praise and not criticism.

There’s good news out there for us younger print media types.

According to a recent national study, 42 percent of Americans age 16 to 29 read newspapers daily or almost every day.

For a generation that’s stereotyped as not being interested in the printed word, 42 percent is quite high.

Of those surveyed 54 percent said they read newspapers to obtain news in detail, and 51 percent read the paper for coverage of movies, concerts and plays.

But whatever the reason, our generation seems to be reading newspapers a lot more than people previously thought they were, which means that newspapers probably won’t be going out of business anytime soon.

Maybe I have a future out of college after all. Now all I have to do is not get my acronyms mixed up in my news stories.

Troy McCullough is a senior in journalism mass communication from Pleasantville. He is the editor in chief of the Daily.