It’s less than an hour until deadline when fines start if the paper isn’t and there’s a gaping hole on the front page for about 700 words, or a little less and a wire photo. This isn’t too big of a deal since we’re only waiting on one story, but then our campus editor Audrie Garrison drops the bomb on me: The last story localizing the Depauw Delta Zeta controversy is about 1300 words.

Our designers are talented, but they’re not miracle workers, so it came down a tough decision at the wire. Do we run the Delta Zeta story in its entirety and yank a photo of a sleeping student in the Union to go with the story about South Bend’s new nap club, or do we cut from the story until it fits the space? If you check out today’s front page, you’ll see that I decided to pull the photo. The Delta Zeta incident at DePauw is huge news right now and our reporter did a great localization. I felt getting all the information we had out there was a lot more important than making the front page more visually appealing in this case.

 So what did you think of today’s paper?

So its just past 1:30 a.m. right now and I just finished putting the paper to bed and concluded posting the page one content to the Web. I am exhausted and am battling the flu, as is a large percent of the newsroom staff right now. Anyways, on the eve of the uncontested executive elections for the IU Student Association, I wanted to share a few comments on how our reporting has differed than past years.

I’ve always enjoyed the yearly elections, mostly due to the fact that it allowed a lot of extra content, debate and discussions of important campus issues between the parties battling it out. Last year, in the week before the elections, the IDS featured daily articles on the debates and how the parties differed on topics such as transportation and technology.

This year however, with the Hoosier ticket already declared the victors for the executive election as no challengers came forward, our coverage plan changed. Still our IUSA beat reporter Beka Mech has been hard at work covering the Hoosier ticket platform and how the decision was made to cancel the executive election. The lack of the executive election, is not going to stop our opinion board either. Continuing an annual tradition, the IDS editorial board invited the candidates to a discussion Friday in our newsroom. Instead of debating between the parties, though, this year the board led a Q-and-A sessions with the Hoosier ticket leaders. Look forward to Wednesday’s IDS to see how our editorial board judged the positions of your next student representatives.

In today’s article, Beka also points out that several congressional positions are still up for grabs as IUSA officials stress the importance of voting in the next two days. So if you have the time, you can vote here, or you can tell us why you chose to participate or not in this year’s election.

In the article, “Talk focuses on raising transgender children”, appearing on today’s page one of the IDS there are several sources identified using only their first names or a pseudonym. Since this is not a common practice of ours, I wanted to walk you through our decision-making process for this choice.

Normally, unless vital times, we do not like to use fake names or confidential sources. Our ethics policy states, “confidentiality should only be granted if there is a real danger of physical, emotional or financial harm to the source should the source reveal his or her name.”

Clearly with a topic as sensitive as transgender issues involving minors we wanted to make sure we were as cautious as possible. We felt because we were dealing with subjects, as young as seven years old, there could be some emotional harm that could potentially result if extremely personal information was released for someone at that age. In the case of the child, who was named under the pseudonym, “Ashley”, we also left out the last name of her mother. The reasoning here, is that if we identified the mother, someone could then identify the child.

I felt the reporter and our health/science and business editor, who worked on the story, did a very responsible job addressing this delicate topic and raising awareness of the issue in an appropriate way. But what do you think? What kind of situations should we be allowed to use confidential sources, if at all?

By now, you’ve probably had a chance to see the redesign of IDSnews.com. We hope you like it! It’s been many months in the works (possibly more than a year?) and it went live late Saturday night.

We’re still working out the bugs and moving things around, so if you see something that doesn’t work, or you want to make a suggestion, please post a comment below or e-mail me at editor@idsnews.com.

The latest issue of INside magazine, “The Sex Issue,” as it’s fondly called, is now available. You can find a copy in Tuesday’s IDS and on newsstands around campus after Tuesday.

Be sure to check it out! And, as always, let us know what you think.

The Internet is a pretty big place and it provides a lot, like really a lot, of cool things we can do enhance your idsnews.com viewing experience. That being said, we have recently began a relatively small initiative to make our Web articles more Internet-friendly. When posting online content we are encouraging our desk editors, who are learning to post to the Web for the first time this semester, to include hyperlinks within the story to take you to relevant Web sites the article may mention.

Now this is just a small step in comparison to the updates, videos, photo slide shows and other Web content we’ve been working on. And maybe only a handful of you would otherwise even notice it. But still we think doing this will make an improvement to our site and will provide you with additional resources to supplement our articles. Basically, we aim to please and whatever we can do to make it easier for you, we want to provide that.

After putting out the newspaper, around midnight, I began posting the P1 section to the Web and in doing so I maybe went a little overboard and included several hyperlinks to all five page one stories. You can check them all out here: 2 likely finalists named for IU presidency, Police find 15 hours of video from peeper, Member of Little Rock 9 to speak tonight, Von Lee expected to open March 15, won’t show movies and Partnering against violence.

So do you think this minor enhancement is worth it or do not care whatsoever about this? Let us know.

On today’s front page, there is a word that we regularly don’t see in our publication. In the article, “IU’s V-Day campaign seeks to curb violence against women”, the story begins, “On Friday, outside the IU State Room West in the Indiana Memorial Union, “Cunt, cunt, cunt” could be heard belted from senior Aura Vaught while rehearsing her solo performance in “Reclaiming Cunt,” part of “The Vagina Monologues,” put on by the IU V-Day campaign.”

We realize some might be shocked or even offended when they first come across the word. However, we decided to include the pharse in the article because we felt it was an essential part of the article. Most importantly in context of the article when reading it as a whole we felt our readers would not be offended or dismayed by the usage in this case.

In deciding whether to print the word, we paid attention to our published code of ethics. As part of the code, we do not use words that can be considered profane or obscene for shock value or without careful consideration. In addition our code says that if we do use a word, we must spell it out in full. So we can’t write, “C*nt,” “F*#k” or anything like that. Finally, we must explore alternatives to see if there is a more appropriate way to convey the story.

I was the managing editor when the story came across my desk for a P1 edit, when the reporter will generally go through a second edit with one of the management staff after working with their respective desk editor for potential front page articles. After reading through the story, the first thing the reporter, the campus editor and I explored was alternatives to using the word in the first paragraph or at all. We came up with a different opening sentence that down played the word, but we felt that this then did not best convey what the source was trying to say.

Next, in line with our ethics policy, I wanted an open newsroom conversation about the issue to see what other members of the staff thought about using the word or not. I called everyone in the newsroom who wasn’t busy with something to read the story and then give their input. About 10 staff members – including reporters, desk editors and copy editors – huddled around the computer and we all came to an agreement that the word was being used in appropriate manner and it was essential to the rest of the story. Many of the staff suggested that we use the next sentence or two to clarify what the source was saying and to show the context of the quote. We took that into consideration and brought a second quote from the source towards the top that was before mentioned later in the article. Later I would run the issue by our editor in chief and the other managing editor. Again we all agreed it should be left in.

Some of our reasoning that we discussed was that the source was not using the term in a derogatory or negative way. She was voicing her opinion about its usage, which we felt she is entitled to do. The word was also used in direct quotes that the reporter confirmed was accurate. The context of the rest of the issue was a main consideration that drove our decision, as well. Finally, we argued we weren’t doing this for shock value to get people to read the rest of the article.

So that was our reasoning and thought process behind it all. Now, do you feel we acted in an appropriate manner, or should we have left it out? Were you offended at all by how we presented the word and can you think of alternatives that we didn’t consider?

So as many of you know, yesterday Anna Nicole Smith died of unknown causes. Since that time we have received a couple of inquiries as to why we didn’t cover her death in Friday’s edition or anywhere online.

First let me explain the procedural reason why our paper didn’t include this. This kind of information does not fit well into any of our sections. I earnestly would not think this warrants P1 coverage, it’s not campus, city/state and it doesn’t fit into our arts content.

The only place it would’ve gone is the Nation & World section; however we try to get that page out early and by the time the news broke, the page was already designed. Because of the nature of the news, we didn’t see it fit to redo our entire page. Instead of covering the death of semi-celebrity, we chose to cover an event with more worldly significance – news that North Korea might consider giving up its nukes.

Now my personal opinions of the matter. I believe that various other news outlets might have overplayed the coverage throughout the day. It was the lead story on almost all the major news Web sites, including CNN, Foxnews, MSNBC and the Washington Post. In local papers Friday, the Indianapolis Star ran it up above the fold, while the Herald-Times included a short plus on its skybox.

I feel the Star played it too high, but the H-T’s coverage was more appropriate. I mean this is not the death of a political leader, a local figure or someone who are readers have a strong connection to. It is a tragic story, no doubt. But perhaps there is more relevant information our readers would prefer. We also knew by the time we come out Friday, we are not breaking this news. Also we understand that even walking through classes Thursday afternoon, many students were buzzing about the unusual death of the actress, who has been well known for causing controversy. Still, we didn’t feel our publication could add any more significance to this issue at that time.

So were we right in saying this story does not deserve the coverage other media outlets gave it? Or do you think because of our audiences’ interest, we should have ran something at least? Let us know.

In the past few days a Facebook group called Bordering on hate speech! has popped up criticizing a column we ran last week about gay adoption.

I just want to reassure readers that we do not run hate speech, that is to say articles which exist only to degrade others or incite violence against them. Abram Hess’ column went through several rounds of editing with several editors, and when I went over it I did not feel it was meant to offend or belittle the GLBT community, rather it was expressing one viewpoint on why gay couples should not be allowed to adopt children.

The IDS opinion page does not exist to promote or endorse one opinion over the other. Rather, it is a forum for all viewpoints to come together in a dialogue about hot button issues like in this case, gay adoption. Some have called for Hess’ removal as a columnist, but to do so would be to unfairly silence one side of the debate.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with Hess’ column, he has people talking on campus about this subject and we will ensure all voices are heard in the pages of the Jordan River Forum. You can send comments to letters@indiana.edu.

The Internet has changed the way newspapers operate. It has opened endless possibilities to the way we can give you information. Using this new tool, today we are trying something new at the IDS.

For the Super Bowl, Sports editor Jake Brown came up with the idea to post live updates of campus reaction. So we sent two reporters, John Wustrow and DeAntae Prince to Nick’s English Hut and Read Residence Hall, respectively.

Since the opening moments of the game until now (at halftime) we have 10 updates with analysis and quotes from students with a few funny anecdotes.

Thus far we like it. But more importantly what do you think of it? Is this something you would like to see more, or are we just wasting our time on something no one will read? Check it out and let us know.

Alright I got to get back to my job as I watch the conclusion of the game and plan my special Sports column afterwards. Go Bears!