The Rice Thresher, Vol. 92, No. 17, Ed. 1 Friday, February 4, 2005 Page: 2 of 24
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THE RICE THRESHER
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4.2005
the Rice Thresher
New 24-hour policy
makes perfect sense
IMikkl Hebl is our commencement
[speaker, huh? Well, It'# too bad
iRIce couldn't get someone from the
[outside, but she's an
■excellent professor,
land she was even our
lo-Week speaker! This
Iwill be just as good.
I They didn't even LOOK for anyone
outside Rlcel? What the hell!
I You'd think after all the tuition and
"lfees and broken
I promises they
I might try to make
lit up to us with a
I decent speaker,
I but noooo...
Next time you swipe your ID card at another college's
door late at night and rush in out of the cold, take a sec-
ond to thank all the people and committees whose logical
thinking made it possible (see story, page 1).
When Student Association President Derrick Matthews
made the suggestion that ID cards should grant access
to all residential buildings all the time, instead of just
between 7 a.m. and midnight each day, we worried that
institutional bureaucracy would prevent the change from
taking place. But all the people and committees and or-
ganizations that had to sign off on the change did so, and
the new policy went into effect Jan. 26.
The college governments were the final hurdle, and we
are glad each college voted both to enact the policy and
to temporarily revert to the old policy during Willy Week,
a decision that should maintain the fun and excitement
of Willy Week jacks. We also hope students will stop
propping doors open; now that all students can access all
residential buildings, there should be no need.
So whether the new rules help you get some late-night
booty, use another college's piano or just do what Rice
students do best — study at the last minute — we're glad
logic prevailed.
MFAH event was fitting
Passport kickoff
Well, we're all that much more cultured.
Even if some of us did not brave the rain to ride the
METRO light rail to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Tuesday for the celebration of the Passport to Houston
program, we think it was an valuable event, in part because
of the strong turnout.
When off-campus venues open for Rice-specific events,
it is important that the university make a good showing,
and both students and faculty were well-represented
Tuesday. We're glad both groups made the effort to
attend and enjoy a museum that otherwise might not
have made it into their schedules.
Now if we could just reserve Reliant Stadium for the
Powderpuff championship game, we'd really be interact-
ing with Houston.
We missed 100 Days
We were disappointed that yesterday — an important
milestone in the lives of graduating seniors — went
without the recognition it deserved.
Today there are 99 days until Commencement, but
yesterday there were 100. We wish the Senior Committee
had honored the occasion and acknowledged the beauty
of nice, round numbers by holding the 100 Days party
that has become an annual senior tradition.
We would urge the committee to plan a 75 Days event,
a 50 Days event or a 25 Days event, but it just wouldn't
be the same. We hope next year's committee will keep an
eye on their calendars and not pass over 100 Days.
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Rice Voices
(Don't) give the people what they want!
We are a people used to getting
exactly what we want, a nation of
iPods and TiVo and Whataburgers.
No freedom is more precious than
our freedom of choice.
But when it comes to
news, what we want is
often precisely what we
do not need.
For a glimpse of where
U.S. news providers may be
headed, we need only look
to Chile and the paper Las
Ultimas Noticias — The
Latest News.
Faced with declining
readership of a paper widely
seen as stodgy, the pub-
lisher, Augustine Edwards, decided
he needed better information on what
readers actually wanted to read. But
instead of hiring expensive marketing
consultants to poll and predict, LUN
installed a system to monitor traffic-
on its Web site and publicly display
the results in the newsroom.
Under Edwards' system, this in-
formation — not editorial discretion
— determines what makes it to the
print edition the next day Reporters
no longer follow assigned beats but
compete with each other for readers.
A story garnering a lot of traffic is put
on the front page and followed up. A
story with little traffic is killed.
In other words, readers get ex-
actly what they want.
LUN became the talk of a nation.
But a funny thing happened. The
more the public was allowed to edit
the newspaper, the less of a newspaper
it became. According to Web traffic,
world leaders' recent policy decisions
are less worthy of coverage than what
they eat for dinner, and even less so
than with whom they sleep.
James
Sulak
LUNs experiment in mob editing
confirms what marketers have known
for years: Given a chance, most people
choose titillation over information.
And why wouldn't they?
Trade negotiations are, in
fact, boring. If we are bored,
it is easy to put down the pa-
per or switch the channel.
Edwards claims his
system is performing an
invaluable public service.
Newspapers do serve the
public, but not when gushing
about Brad Pitt and Jennifer
Aniston.
Despite Edwards' noble
talk, he is really only serv-
ing his newspaper's profit margin.
Subscribers and advertisers are the
currency of media. With readership
dwindling, newspapers must grab
readers by the throat to survive.
Although no news organizations
that I know of in the United States
use Web traffic as an editor, they
too are struggling to give readers
exactly what they want. Television
news is full of self-help "news you
can use" segments and puff celebrity
pieces. Hosts of morning news shows
recline on sofas while laughing about
the wacky hijinks they've inflicted
upon one another. News becomes
entertainment — infotainment.
But more troubling than triviality
is the accelerating trend of tailoring
news to viewers' political leanings.
Take Fox News Channel. Despite
proclaiming itself "fair and balanced,"
it unabashedly caters to conservative
viewers. Fromjune to December2003,
Republican oneon-one interview guests
outnumbered Democrats five to one on
"Special Report with Brit Hume."
"If it hadn't been for Fox,"
Republican Sen. Trent Lott, Miss.,
said during the 2000 election fiasco,
"I don't know what I'd have done for
the news."
Perhaps jealous of Fox's ratings
success, MSNBC picked up arch-
conservative "CNN Crossfire" veteran
Tucker Carlson. His show will join
former Republican Congressman Joe
Scarborough's "Scarborough Coun-
try" to make one of the most right-wing
prime-time lineups on television.
No one I know to the left of a moder-
ate Republican can stomach Fox News
Channel. But it is wildly successful pre-
cisely because it gives its conservative
viewers exactly what they want.
It's simply a lot more fun to be
agreed with than disagreed with. Ad-
mit it, all of you anti-war Bush-bashers
out there: You smile inside whenever
bad news from Iraq hits the front
page. It proves you were right.
People like news that makes
them feel good, smart and righteous.
People don't like news that makes
them feel stupid or wrong; news that
runs counter to their worldview.
But custom-tailored news is in-
complete news, no matter how good
it feels. Without the common narra-
tive of objective news, people who
disagree cannot even speak a common
language. They can never reach com-
mon ground. Political polarization will
be impossible to overcome.
News media must serve the public
and not merely sell to it. The media
must ignore focus groups and polls
and report uncomfortable facts. Bor-
ing facts, sometimes. Its most impor-
tant job is to give us what we usually
do not want. Ours is to read it.
James Sulak is a Hanszen College
senior and former opinion editor.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the Thresher
editorial staff
Religious doctrines
can be detrimental
To the editor:
I thank Skye Schell for writing his
letter ("M any thinkers miss religion's
meaning," Jan. 28) in response to my
letter ("Religion not immune from
liberal scrutiny," Dec. 3). This letter
addresses some of his points.
Schell states that philosophers
tend to underestimate the value of
religious phenomena for humanity.
But clearly, many religious doctrines
are harmful. The Muslim is com-
manded by his sacred text to fight
infidels, for example. Considering
only the beneficial doctrines is arbi-
trary, for the harmful ones have just
as strong a claim to divine sanction.
That religionists today conveniently
ignore or rationalize the latter is
irrelevant. In this respect, funda-
mentalists should be commended
for their consistent thinking.
Schell notes some thinkers who
say that one cannot understand
the truth of a religion without first
embracing it. But this is vacuous
because one who embraces a religion
necessarily ceases to doubt it. If one
remains skeptical, he obviously did
not embrace it initially. Acceptance
means faith, and non-acceptance
prevents understanding. No wonder
secular philosophers are said to
"miss the point" of religion. They are
denied the right to justified denial at
the outset.
TTiat many core religious beliefs
are either true or false is a fact of
primary importance. No amount of
talk about the spiritual meaning or
pragmatic value of religion can hide
or extenuate it. It the metaphysical
bases of religion are unjustified and
false, then its practical manifestations
should not be respected.
Rex Hubbard
Jones sophomore
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Gilbert, Lindsey & Yardley, Jonathan. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 92, No. 17, Ed. 1 Friday, February 4, 2005, newspaper, February 4, 2005; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443028/m1/2/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.