Tuesday through Thursday of this week is something we call dry runs here in the newsroom at the IDS. This tragically named period is the days in which the staffs that have been selected for the upcoming fall and summer semesters take over their new positions so they can get an early start learning all the basics of their jobs. So for today and Wednesday, I took on my role as editor-in-chief, as I will for this fall, and the staff that put out today’s paper were the staff that will be working in the fall with me. And for Thursday, the summer staff will be putting out Friday’s paper under the leadership of the summer’s EIC, Zach Osterman.

So with completely new editors, and people in positions they have never been in before, I think the results were very good. We actually were early today and I thought the paper front to back looked solid. We had a little trouble coming up with our dominant art early in the day, but with a little help from our graphics desk, we put together a clean looking centerpiece about religion on campus. In addition, our feature page had one of the better stories I’ve seen this year, on the student who is recovering from a case of bacterial meningitis.

So hopefully when you are reading the paper Wednesday, you won’t be able to tell it was put out by a staff that was working together for the very first time. And hopefully tomorrow will go just as smoothly.

In my three years working here, only once have I seen a opinion run on our front page. That was last year when we ran a guest column from the president of the Muslim Student Union regarding the mass protests in the Middle East resulting from the publication of a Danish cartoon mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

Well today, we decided another opinion/analysis piece should run on our front page. After countless hours pouring over documents in the IU archives and talking to sources, IDS sports columnist Andrew Shaffer, developed an interesting column regarding the documented past segregationist beliefs of former IU board of trustees president Ora L. Wildermuth, whom the Ora L. Wildermuth Intramural Center is named after.

During our daily budget meeting, where we plan the placement of stories for that day, the editors of the paper spent about a half hour discussing the merits of running this on our front page. In the end we decided it deserved as much exposure as we could give it because of the quality of reporting, high reader interest in the story and the opportunity to raise public debate on this issue.

One of the main reservations we had of running it in this spot is that we were afraid readers may not make the distinction that this was a column voicing an opinion and not a traditional news story that is by nature supposed to be void of opinions by the author. However, by marking it “analysis” and including an editor’s note describing the content, we felt our readers would be able to make this distinction.

In the end we recognized the purpose of a newspaper being a vehicle for public discourse and debate. Since this is a topic and subject most of the IU community is unaware of, we believe regardless of what opinion you have on the subject, it is something that should be examined and discussed.

So did you think we made the right choice in running this on page one? Let us know by commenting below and also vote in our poll on idsnews.com of whether you think IU should change the name of the Ora L. Wildermuth Intramural Center because of documentation showing that Wildermuth advocated segregation?

As you know, we here at deadline love democracy. In order to spread this great idea, we’ve started doing a new thing in the paper this week: We’ve been printing your vote results from our idsnews.com polls in the next day’s newspaper. The point here is, that we value what you have to say and we want to hear from you. So keep voting in those polls, otherwise the terrorists win.

If you haven’t heard already our current Asst. Campus Editor Zach Osterman will be your IDS Summer 2007 editor-in-chief. Now, you may not know much about Zach so I wanted to share with you a few columns about him. It recently became aware to us that Zach’s father is columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and he has wrote a few times about his son. Without further ado, here you go. Enjoy:

http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/aroundss/entries/2005/09/12/when_a_son_goes.html

http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/aroundss/entries/2007/02/05/when_a_son_turn.html

The fourth edition of our new INside magazine hits the stands today. Dubbed, “The prediction issue,” read about 25 projections of where you will be at in 10 years, 5 students who will change the world and 4 projections from billionaire and IU alumnus Mark Cuban. 

While INside is still young in its first year, its longterm survival is not certain. We need to hear from you to know what you think. What do you like or don’t like about INside. What themes would you like to see in future issues? What can we do make sure you read the magazine?

The magazine can be found inserted in Wednesday’s IDS or on various stands around campus.