The Great Literati Divide (or How to Kill a Student Newspaper)

Every Sunday evening, without fail, I would space out for an hour while the section editors and shakers of Rice's undergraduate newspaper argued about factual accuracy and page layout. My job as the Thresher's satirist was to give readers something to laugh at while they're taking a crap in Duncan Hall between classes, not to win a kiddie Pulitzer for the most hard-hitting investigation of campus inefficiencies. So, naturally, I often resented the fact that I was required to attend these meetings.

To the extent that I did listen, though, there was one resounding lament that I heard over the course of my tenure as Backpage editor: The Thresher's general decline in article quality. The news and copy sections have been embarrassed a number of times this past year thanks to awesome ineptitude demonstrated by the news writing staff. Check out the erratum in nearly every issue published in this year's volume. Last fall, the front page ran an article that reported one in five students was infected with H1N1 (when the number was closer to 2%). The downward trend hit rock bottom in February when Rice's administration was forced to write-in and correct glaring factual errors two weeks in a row.

Personally, I'm more upset about the decline in quality of another section: Op-Eds. The weekly editorial columns that the Thresher receives from the student body have all but flatlined in terms of caliber and general interest. Case in point: The Thresher's most prolific student author also happens to be the most out-of-touch when it comes to campus culture, writing in about how Houston is inferior to New York City and why final exams should be optional. This is the kind of thing I should have been writing about in my satire section and yet, somehow, columns like hers are still showing up on Page 3.

Pinpointing that "somehow" interests me severely. What happened to the Rice Thresher? Is Coffeehouse poisoning the staff with ayahuasca? No, because the Thresher doesn't receive free Coffeehouse coffee anymore. Thanks, Evan.

We are then left with a few reasonable explanations:

• There are no more good, dedicated writers at Rice University. They all graduated in '09.
• There are good writers at Rice University, but their work is purposefully sabotaged by the Thresher's editorial staff for some incomprehensible reason. Goddamn it Casey.
  
• There are good writers at Rice University, and they're just not writing for the Thresher.
  

Let's ignore that second point for a moment while we critically consider what has changed the landscape of Rice's undergraduate writing community over the past few years. Obviously, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Rice Standard (because Alice Townes is always on my mind, zing!). It's a student-run, university-independent magazine/blog that has really taken off in the past few year. Oh, and don't forget about Open, Rice's literary sex magazine. Open is like an episode of The Big Bang Theory with less blonds, more nudity and more frankness about nerds not getting laid. And then there's Catalyst (the research journal for kids).

Did I miss anyone? Probably. It seems like every niche at Rice has its own publication these days.

But if you take the time to read any of the publications mentioned above you'll realize that my first guess—that the good writers have gone the way of the dinosaurs—simply can't be true. The Standard (mostly) holds itself to an intellectual... standard that borders on cosmopolitan. There are a few exceptions to this rule but, on average, the essays posted on the Standard possess a quality and readability that easily exceeds that of the contemporary Thresher. While Open and Catalyst don't generate nearly as much content per year as the Standard, their existence still necessitate a certain amount of hard work and dedication from their respective editorial staffs, writers, and girls willing to show their butt-cracks to the campus. God bless you, youthful rebellion.

And so here we are, finally, at my thesis. Despite their respective intentions, publications like the Rice Standard are sucking the life out of Rice's student-run newspaper. Their crime is not a malicious crime but, instead, a crime perpetrated by sheer existence. They are draining the literary-oriented campus talent from its former, centralized location at the Thresher and directing it toward niche audiences with limited perspectives and smaller readerships.

The issue is simply a matter of limited resources. Rice's small campus has a fixed number of individuals willing to write for fun on a regular basis, and even fewer willing to read, edit and layout pages. These are busy kids. Future leaders, I'm told. And they're smart. They're going to write to maximize their exposure to interested readers, minimize the work involved in getting published and, perhaps most importantly, they're only going to write when they have the time to do so leisurely.

The Standard's WordPress format makes it easy for any member of Rice's literati to contribute a couple hundred words on a topic of their respective interest. They don't get paid, sure, but no one (except for it's own editorial staff) is writing for a living at the Thresher anyways. Standard writers also receive instant gratification and can easily and quickly engage their readers through a familiar commenting system. The Thresher's College Publisher-based website is laughably clunkier than the Standard; the rules governing when and how writers can comment on their articles on the Thresher's site are contrived and confusing.

On the other hand, the Standard's online-only format severely limits its ability to reach the entire campus. College newspapers-- at least, our college newspaper and most other small college newspapers-- don't necessarily follow the national trend of declining print newspaper readership caused by increased online readership. Picking up a free Thresher on Friday mornings is still a tradition well-ingrained in campus culture. There's even one particular professor who likes to talk to me during Friday ELEC lab about what he has read in the Thresher. The Standard, on the other hand, may reach students but not necessarily alumni and professors: It's just the nature of the beast.

And so, owing to convenience and prestige, the Standard has effectively stolen the campus' best writers away from the student body and directed their efforts toward reaching a smaller and more niche audience.

For that niche audience, though, convenience and prestige are a great thing. The Standard has a certain feel to it. Articles feel smarter. The site looks good. The pool of individuals who regularly comment on articles is small and personable. They laud intellectual discourse and shun stupidity. And while I have no doubt that the Standard is daily reading for some members of the campus administration, it is not scrutinized by the same pool of prospective students and their parents, alumni or faculty members who love to make a fuss when the Thresher does anything slightly subversive. Autonomy has made the Standard interesting.

The Standard, however, is not the face of Rice. The Thresher is the face of Rice. And when those same prospective students, alumni and faculty read yet another half-brained, last-minute opinion piece presented under the Thresher's masthead, they have to wonder what sort of students are running the student-run newspaper. Or what kind of students go to Rice.

It's in everyone's best interest for publications to present their best, most high-quality copy to the campus. But things have to change in order for that to happen. The literati have to branch out. The publications have to innovate and recognize that if any one of them is going to flourish, they have to sustainably manage their most valuable resource.

And lastly, I have my prescriptions. No giant rant pointing out the obvious would be complete without some ideas about where to go next.

For the Standard:

• Recognize that the Thresher is hurting as a result of your existence. This was, after all, one reason that the Standard was formed in the first place: As retaliation against what the founders perceived to be bias and lack of Rand-esque autonomy and free enterprise at the Thresher. Or because the founders were mad they couldn't inject their wacky, neoconservative opinions into the student newspaper. In any case, it's time to make nice.
  
• Encourage writers to increase their exposure by re-working their opinion articles toward the campus as a whole and submitting them to the Thresher. That's how activism works: Pounding every available outlet with your brand of the truth.
• Stay open to new ideas and collaboration with the Thresher. They have something you don't: Money. And they're probably willing to share it in the pursuit of readership.

For the Thresher:

• Realize where the good writers have gone, why they left and admit that you have suffered as a result.
• Work on writer incentives. Standardize (lolz) a workflow that makes it easier for writers to participate in the editorial process, provide commentary online and minimizes the amount of time they have to spend writing articles.
• In today's world, no one expects a print institution to provide the same sort of time-sensitive information that the Internet and social media provide. If an Op-Ed isn't time-sensitive but has potential, send it back for another week of revision. Work on articles for months at a time if you have to. The point is to recover some of that quality that has been lacking for the past year or two.
• Pay writers more money. If it's supposed to be an incentive, make it an incentive. Ten dollars per article is a joke to writers exhausted by their respective workloads.
• Stay open to new ideas and collaboration with the Standard. They have something you don't: Quality. And they're probably willing to share it in the pursuit of readership.

For the other campus publications:

• Just... I dunno. Write something for the Thresher and the Standard every now and then, even if it turns out to be a shallow promotion of your publication. Their editorial staff can always turn you down.

Now, what to do about armchair experts too selfish to write for any campus publication is another story entirely...