Editor in Chief

Editor's Note: This is the second in an occasional series about different reporters at the Daily Collegian.

Usually, there's no warning when news is about to hit. The phone rings, your e-mail beeps, and bang! you need to drop everything you're doing and just hope Starbucks will be open late. Sometimes, I'd really love some advance notice. Just a simple e-mail, maybe a post-it note, that could let me know that we're about to discover a big story that's going to keep the Collegian buzzing until the wee small hours of the morning. But asking for advance notice is like the world's largest ball of twine -- it's rare but boring at the same time. Even a memo takes away some of the heart-pounding mystique.

And sometimes that shock and adrenaline can propel you to do things you never have before.

Our greeks reporter Katie Maloney found that out last week when she casually dropped by the office to update her budget. She thought it was going to be a quick in-and-out visit. Six hours later, she realized how wrong she was.

After watching the now very famous Youtube clip, we saw Katie and asked her to start investigating. Find out which fraternity this is, we asked her, and let's hear what they have to say. Then, make some calls to see if the university and the police know anything about it. We told her get enough information so we can run a story on it tomorrow. Katie simply nodded and started working the computers and the phones.

I talked to Katie yesterday about her week of investigating a story that had a lot of people talking about image, reputation and blame.

Me: When you found out you were going to be the greeks reporter for the fall, what were you expecting?

Katie: I liked the balance of feature and news-oriented stories -- the beat is really versatile. Sometimes, it's kind of like a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" thing. The fraternity love us for publicizing their philanthropies, but we need them to help us find out what is going on.

Me: After Homecoming and a lot of the lighter stories you've gotten to write this semester, this video story was quite a change. How was the change, especially jumping headfirst into interviewing some pretty high-level people?

Katie: Well, last week was really fun. I was always really intimidated by writing [those] stories; it's not something just anyone gets to do very often. But it was fun, especially when you know you're writing something that affects a lot of people.

Me: You called Penn State President Graham Spanier at home, Tom Poole, the associate to the president for administration, and police chief Tom King. It was almost midnight. Were you nervous?

Katie: On the phone everyone's pretty much the same. You can psych yourself out, but I didn't have time to psych myself out. If you interview people in person, they can see your face and your sweaty palms. That day, I was talking to my dad and he asked if I had ever interviewed Spanier -- what a weird coincidence.

Me: Did you think that night as you left at 2:30 a.m. that your work was done?

Katie: No, I came in the next day expecting the second story would be getting out as much info as I could confirm. Things came to light that we didn't know before. But my favorite was the third story I wrote about how the main victim wasn't a member of that fraternity. Follow-ups are more fun, because then I knew the story and I was just trying to dig a little deeper. It's journalism -- doing the investigation and finding out what was going on. You get to exercise your creativity more. See, anyone could have gone to the Homecoming parade, but when you're telling someone something they don't know about...that's really exciting.

Me: Have you gotten a lot of feedback?

Katie: I've gotten some e-mails, some crazy ones, like "throw them out, suspend them." But as much as I do like the reader feedback, I'm much more satisfied from hearing from people here about what's going on. At 8:30 a.m. that day, another reporter sent me the sweetest e-mail. They've been there. They know the struggles and that's feedback from people I really respect.

I always knew corporate America wasn't my scene. I never really liked the institution of money -- I'd sooner spend than save or gamble away my pennies for the sheer fun of playing dollar poker with my Pop-pop. I never liked clothes that require an iron or a dry cleaner. I much prefer my schizophrenic ensembles that today entail fur-lined snow boots and a T-shirt that has multiple coffee stains. Don't get me wrong -- it's not the meeting that I mind; journalists are no strangers to meetings. It's the careful phrasing, the "strategic long-term planning," the strict rules of procedure and starched blouses that make me want to squirm.

But I can't complain. I went into my tenure as editor-in-chief knowing full well I had to put my hesitation and sweatpants aside once or twice a month to sit on the board of directors for Collegian Inc., the Pennsylvania non-profit that represents The Daily Collegian, The Weekly Collegian, Collegian Magazines and Collegian Online.

It's quite an important and occasionally awe-inspiring part of my job. I represent the 200-member news division, I give monthly operating reports and I have a vote in decisions that affect the place I've called home for almost four years.

I join the Collegian's general manager Gerry Hamilton, my business division counterpart, Carolyn Yanoff, four other Penn State students, a Penn State faculty member and three at-large professionals.

Now, I'm still not spouting "best practices" with ease and I usually have to look up the business acronyms later, but I'm finding more in common between the board room and the newsroom than I ever thought I would.

Like journalists, the 12 board members are clearly not in it for the money. Seriously, we don't pay them -- they volunteer to do this in their spare time. And sometimes I wonder why. It's no mystery why I love this place. I've learned so much more here than just correcting grammar or writing headlines. I know the stories behind the stories, the long hours, the suffocating frustration and the addicting rush adrenaline that comes with the smallest success.

Maybe our board members with a past connection to journalism just miss the highs and lows. Howard Heevner, Penn State's director of annual giving, was a former opinion writer for The Daily Iowan. Communications and law professor Clay Calvert was a former writer and opinion editor at The Stanford Daily. Board president and Smeal College of Business professor Renee Flemish worked for the Collegian in 1985 and 1986.

Maybe board member Mike Hofherr, the information technology manager for Smeal College of Business, finds common ground in our similarly information-oriented mission. Or maybe he just saw our server being cooled by a well-positioned cardboard box and felt bad for us.

Maybe the four students, Christian Nickerson, Thomas Pieters, Hannah Ryan and Kirsten Grenoble, read something once they really liked or something they really didn't. Maybe they were overwhelmed with curiosity to meet the people behind the paper. Maybe they just needed an extracurricular activity.

Whatever the reasons, they all give up time to listen to our triumphs and troubles, to oversee long-range policy and to strategically plan for the future they probably won't even see.

And as the journalism industry faces a technological revolution, a changing business model and a never-ending news cycle, we have our hands full this year. But it's reassuring to know that those days when we get caught up just trying to put out a paper, some people are looking ahead.

Responsible ethical journalism isn't black and white. There's more shades of gray than Picasso's Guernica. While there are common principles all journalists uphold -- seek the truth, minimize harm, act independently and be accountable -- this is a self-regulated industry. We have certain policies, like withholding the names of victims of rape and minors, that we consistently abide by, but no story, no source and no dilemma is ever cookie-cutter simple.

We faced a situation like this two weeks ago when freshman student Taylor Thomasson, of Herndon, Va., jumped from the window of her eighth-floor Tener Hall dorm room and died two days later from her injuries.

Upon receiving a phone call from one of our reporters, Penn State spokesperson Lisa Powers sent me a very polite e-mail asking that the Collegian show restraint reporting on such a sensitive issue, specifically requesting that we withhold Thomasson's name from the story.

Suicide is an issue that affects one million people annually. According to the National Institute of Medicine, "Every 41 seconds someone in the U.S. attempts suicide; every 16.7 minutes, someone completes suicide; and every day more than 85 people die by suicide." And in addition to covering politics, local business and the administration, newspapers deal in deaths. It isn't a pretty part of the job.

Though widespread, The Collegian usually doesn't report on suicides, unless it involves a public figure or a public place. By its nature, it is a very personal issue. And many journalists believe reporting on the legal activities of private figures in private places is nothing more than pandering to lurid curiosity. (That's right - despite the popular misconception, suicide is no longer crime in any state.)

And though Ms. Powers raised a valid concern, we felt the Penn State community had a right to know about Thomasson's death. We originally published an article on Nov. 15 about Thomasson's critical injuries as the police had not yet determined whether foul play was involved. Since the story was in the public sphere, we decided that her classmates, friends and professors had a right to know that Thomasson had died. She also was injured on campus in a public place.

It helped that her parents agreed to release a statement about their daughter, saying that they appreciate "the outpouring of love and support provided by the PSU family in dealing with this tragic event."

And as with many issues that seem to be purely private matters, suicide does spark dialog about the gravity of depression on a college campus and the services available to those affected.

We don't take these kinds of decisions lightly. We try to see all sides of any ethical dilemma while striving to tell the truth and minimize harm. We're always looking for just the right shade of gray.