Editor in Chief

Sen. John McCain joined his running mate for her follow-up interview with Katie Couric after a previous interview became fuel for satire and attacks from the media.

When Sarah Palin was confronted with one of her own quotes from the weekend that sided with Barack Obama and went against McCain's public stance, Palin struggled through a reply. But not long after, the Republican presidential nominee came to her aid, calling out Katie Couric for "gotcha journalism."

McCain claimed the quote was taken out of context. "This was a gotcha soundbite," he said.

"Gotcha" journalism is one of the things people love to hate about the media. Everybody slips up sometimes, sure. And to call someone out for a simple mistake is despicable, people argue.

It's an easy thing to criticize.

But take, at the simplest level, comedy. The Daily Show has some of the best researchers on its staff. It seems that team can dig up the dirt on anyone. But Jon Stewart is rarely criticized for "gotcha" journalism. Why? Because it's comedy. "It doesn't have an impact."

But what about in this case?

Gov. Palin was out on the campaign trail, schmoozing it up at a pizza parlor and answering questions from voters. A voter asked how she would deal with Pakistan. Palin said she would launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan, if need be, according to CNN.

Quote Couric: "Now that's almost the exact position Barack Obama has taken, and that you, Sen. McCain, have criticized as something you do not say out loud. Gov. Palin, are you two on the same page?"

Gotcha.

Sometimes quotes are taken out of context decades after they were spoken, even after their speaker has apologized and moved on. And sometimes, quotes are taken from a public event whose exact purpose is to get voters to be supporters.

I won't say McCain was wrong to cut off his running mate and criticize Couric. I won't say Couric had the right, nay, the responsibility to call out Palin for having public comments different from McCain. After all, it's in the past.

And that would be "gotcha."

It's Monday morning, and the ink from today's paper has already started to mark up my fingertips.

No cases of the Mondays in Happy Valley; the Nittany Lions are No. 6 in the country, according to the Associated Press poll. The big jump in the ranking came after Derrick Williams' huge game and Daryll Clark's pair of touchdown passes. Of course, don't forget to join our football reporters on the field for our Post-Game picnic, and check out our photo gallery of this year's White House.

Worried about all the dismal news surrounding the economy? Ryan Pfister, our Monday columnist and economics major, says that not worrying might make you rich.

You might have noticed something different about some of our bylines recently. Some read "For the Collegian" and others have two writers, but only one e-mail address. These are our candidates, the future staff members of The Daily Collegian. You'll be noticing their articles more and more as time goes on, and we'll be training them all semester to be the best reporters they can be.

Check out the Collegian's most popular blog, Exposure, and the photo staff's picks for photos of the week last week.

Don't forget that what you see in the paper isn't everything we've written each day. Sports fans would be wise to check out the sports section of our Web site for stories that we just weren't able to fit in the paper, but are absolutely worth reading. Check out Alex Angert's piece on Penn State crew, a club sport here.

That's all for today. Hope to hear from you.

Well, hello there, stranger. It's been some time.

No, it's not you. You've been great. It's me. You've been trying to chat, and I've been quiet here.

You've been visiting plenty. Thanks. I like to think we've made it worth your time.

We've been doing a lot with the place, as I'm sure you've noticed. The Daily Collegian is now video-savvy, and improving every day. It helps that the football team has been giving us plenty to chat about.

We've added a few new blogs, too. Check out our Icers blog, Between the Pipes, our politics blog and our food blog.

Keep an eye on our Venues Web site, which we'll be bulking up throughout the semester. Our movies page now includes trailers for all the upcoming shows. (Personally, I can't wait for Choke.) Think the ever-popular Sexy Meter is gone? Think again.

Our increased focus on the Web isn't taking away from our roots, though. Our reporters have been working tirelessly to produce the best content possible for the paper.

Heading to Purdue for the second Big Ten game? Check out Ben Skalina's piece on away-game travel. Did you hear that Penn State students might have to spend a little more to pay for PSU's electricity? Check out Aubrey Whelan's story. And don't miss Paul Nordeman's column, which explains why Philadelphia is superior, statistically, to its western neighbor.

This has been a whisper of a conversation for too long. Check back here often for my picks in the paper and online. See something you like? See something you hate? Let me know. I'd be happy to post some of your thoughts on here, and respond to your questions.

Welcome to the conversation.

The Daily Collegian news division is a 200-piece machine. We are editors, reporters, photographers and graphic artists.

Each piece is vital to the success of the paper. Without even one, the paper would not be a fraction as good as it is.

But each semester, we lose a good chunk of those pieces -- to graduation, transfers and the like.

Thankfully, at a university that brings in thousands of fresh bodies each year, we don't have much of a problem filling the vacancies. Some personalities can't be replaced, but strong work ethic can be found everywhere.

That's where you come in.

If you're a hard-working individual with a knack for writing and an urge to ask questions, check out the paper for the next few days. You'll notice an advertisement with all the details about our tryout system. Lazy bums need not apply.

You don't need to have any experience, and there's no trick to getting through tryouts. Just show us how good you want to be.

Besides, this machine only needs a few pieces to improve even more.

Questions? Call the newsroom at 814-865-1828.

You probably noticed something different about today's paper.

The skyboxes were still there, as was the flag. But it was one of those "did you cut your hair?" moments.

You probably noticed a 10"x2" space in the bottom right corner of the front page. You haven't just missed it all summer; this was the only time all semester we've done it.

We put it there so we could mail a copy of today's Collegian to every Penn State freshman. Inside we included Fresh Start, our annual magazine dedicated completely toward the collegiate rookie.

Fresh Start is a guide around this enormous campus, a map of a foreign land for immigrating 17 and 18-year-olds. In it, we describe each section of campus, as well as the HUB and the new UHS building.

It's also one of many publications we put together that are not The Daily Collegian. We're also currently working on Fall 101, a "Welcome Back" of sorts for when students arrive for the new semester, and Fall Sports Preview, which ... you can figure out.

Late next month, look for our housing guide, too.

The daily is a necessary part of The Collegian, but it is not the only part. Our other publications help you get to know us, us get to know you, and make life a little simpler for everyone.

There won't be a mailing label on the front page for any other publication (the magazines will all be available on campus), but we're hoping you'll notice them anyway.

Besides, you'll want help looking for a place to live next year. And you've got to be curious about our football preview.

Some days, a story is on our front page because it's the biggest news -- a downtown fire or a visiting politician.

Other days, a story is on front because it's the latest about a newsmaker -- JoePa isn't feeling well or President Graham Spanier is going on vacation.

But then there are days when something happens that shouldn't be too big of a deal, but you want to read all about it. These are the stories that earn the front page because we know you'll care. And that's exactly what happened a few days ago.

The Princeton Review compiled a list of universities for its annual categorized ranking. As usual, Penn State made the list in several areas, most notably as a party school and a school of students dissatisfied with its financial aid.

Sure, the rank isn't scientific; it's decided by an unofficial poll on the Princeton Review's Web site. But that didn't stop students from taking the rankings -- at least under "party school " -- very seriously.

But, as you've read in our editorial, this ranking is not necessarily something to be proud of; it's simply one aspect of a complex university. With all the alcohol-fueled problems the campus has seen in the last few years, the ranking is really more of a scarlet letter than anything else.

Others, like placing No. 5 for job placement, are the rankings we should brag about.

But if you're really more interested in boasting about how hard Penn Staters party, the (unofficial) No. 9 college newspaper is happy to oblige.

Just don't forget to read our take.

As journalists, we here at The Collegian are used to being the ones holding the notepads, recorders and cameras. Every day, reporters and photographers are chasing the stories around State College and, sometimes, beyond.

We've had to make some tough phone calls to families of the deceased, and we've had to push Penn State's administrators and the borough's police officers for answers. All in all, this job toughens us up quite a bit.

But if you ever want to see journalists become uncomfortable, simply turn the tables on them. Aim the camera. Ask the questions.

That's exactly what happened last week in our office, when students from a journalism camp visited to see what it is we do here.

For almost an hour, editors from all divisions of The Collegian sat at the front of a classroom while high school students drilled us with questions about our coverage as well as our lives:

-- Yes, this is a full-time job. Yes, we're still students. Yes, that can be very stressful.

-- How do we balance it all? Coffee. Black.

-- I can't begin to guess how many stories we've run about Joe Paterno.

It's not as though we mind these sessions (they happen at least once a semester), it's just that we're not used to being on the other end. Most journalists aren't. We have Collegian alumni return to the office now and then to impart wisdom on their followers, and they all say it's a similar feeling.

But we all get over it. We're the storytellers, after all.

Besides, there's another group coming in about 12 hours.

Being a good reporter -- at the Collegian and elsewhere -- means being a good investigator and a good writer.

An honored novelist has nothing on a Collegian staff member if he or she can't find the story. A private eye wouldn't make it through our candidate class if he or she couldn't communicate well.

To do our jobs well, we have to do both the searching and the writing; Christopher Columbus as a poet, if you will.

But sometimes, unlike Columbus, America is brought to us. Such was the case when John O'Brien called the Collegian office a few days back.

In his message, he detailed his morning experience like no other. In the cleanest description possible: His toilet water and its, erm, "accompanying products" traveled the wrong way through the pipes -- fast.

We had a quick chuckle/gag at the thought, but knew we had a story students would want to know about. We also knew that we would have a very specific audience, allowing us to have, well, a bit more fun with the piece than the Centre Daily Times could.

So we did. And the result was exactly what we wanted.

Students all over campus were reading the story, showing their friends and spreading it across the Internet.

Who would have guessed that one of most popular stories this summer would have been total crap?

We've got some great investigators down here, and they do their jobs well. But this week has shown us some of the best stories can fall into your lap...

...after shooting into someone else's.

It's a terrifying time in the world of journalism.

We knew what we were getting into when we started at the Collegian years ago; journalism is a field filled with bad hours and worse pay. But in our idealistic "do it for the story" heads, we knew it would be worth it.

Even as major cuts in the field's workforce take place, some as recent as two weeks ago, we here at the Collegian haven't been too stressed. We'll worry about that when it comes to the job search.

But we're doing just fine. It's a beautiful, blissful ignorance -- this windowless basement of the James Building. For now, we still all have a job (albeit not a paying one) and a newspaper to hold (or read online).

For those veteran readers in the audience, you might have noticed something new about us. The old "have you lost weight?" line actually garners a truthful answer. Yes, we have. But that doesn't mean we're happy.

In the summer, we have a much smaller population in town. Low circulation, small staff, little advertising, few stories, fewer news pages -- it's not the Collegian of semesters past.

We don't complain too much about the thin look; we wouldn't be able to do as good of a job covering a fall semester's worth of news in the summer with this size staff, anyway.

It's a painful reminder of the world in which we all reside. It's a world where some newspapers are scrapping their print editions while news Web sites are taking their places.

But for now, our idealism is winning. We're giving up deck chairs for desk chairs and campfires for the AP wire, all because we know it's what we should do. When we graduate, the hours will still be bad and the cost of living will outpace the already-low salaries.

And then, through byline and/or online, we'll be back to our idealistic selves.

For the story.

- Terry

This week, I won't regale you with tales of reader dissatisfaction, stories behind the stories or long-winded explanations of Collegian policy.

This week, I need you to be the editor.

Every Tuesday -- usually around 11 p.m. as the Web editors breathe down my neck for this blog -- I tried to think of a topic that would surprise, inform or entertain you about the drama that is inextricably intertwined with the news. Some weeks, it was a breeze. Getting 62 e-mails about anything is usually a clue it will make for an interesting, if not controversial, theme. Some weeks, I was cold calling non-journalist friends asking them if they would ever spend 6 minutes reading about a board of directors meeting.

But now that it is all said and done, as a journalist, a student and plain curious person, I want to know: What did you like? What did you hate?

Are the inner-workings of The Daily Collegian any clearer? Did you get an understanding of what we do and how we do it? Did you want to know more about the people who make up this well-oiled machine? Did you want a better source for national and international media news? Do you think this forum is just useless?

Your feedback will contribute to the greater good of the blogosphere, I promise. It won't just be satisfying my curiosity, but I'll make sure it gets passed along to Terry Casey, the next editor-in-chief.

Regardless of whether you loved this weekly sound off or thought it was too preachy, too didactic or too whiny -- thanks for reading. I certainly had fun writing.