Don't Kill the Messenger.

A recent post published by my friend Shelley over at At Home in Rome, reminded me of an article I wrote recently about the problem of graffiti on Ohio State's campus. I was told to report on a local campus-area organization, and find out what it was exactly that they were focusing all of their energy on. After talking with numerous sources, l found that the issue of graffiti removal was a hot topic. So, I wrote the article after one of the organization's meetings, to run in the following day's edition of The Lantern.

The next day, when I picked up the paper, the graffiti article was the lead story above the fold, with a decent looking photo spread. So, as an aspiring journalist I was happy to just have a front page clip.

3 hours later:

During my lunch break at work I hopped online to check my email. I didn't think much of it when I saw that I had five new messages, but when I noticed that all of them had "In response to your graffiti article", or some vulgar variation, in their subject lines, I got a little nervous.

As it so happened, the photo editor/photographer decided to run these pictures alongside my story:

I didn't even realize, until reading the emails, the context of the pictures. Not only were these walls legally painted almost a year ago, but they were painted as a tribute to Daymon Dodson, a well-known musician in the Columbus scene, who died this past summer. Anyone who's anyone knew Daymon, which meant (to all of you who have ever taken a logic course) that anyone who read this article immediately became livid with me, regardless of the fact that the article never mentioned that wall.

The truth of the matter is, I was as shocked as anyone to see the pictures run along side my story, and I spent the better part of a week explaining this, in numerous e-mails from people who had contacted me. The article, which you can read here, focused on the petty vandalism that plagues the walls of residents and businesses in the campus area. Despite the disconnect between the photos and the story itself, I was threatened, I was called a horrible journalist, as well as countless other things. All because of a miscommunication between higher ups.

This calls to mind a famous quote in the realm of journalism, which reads: "Lawyers hang their mistakes. Doctors bury theirs. Journalists put theirs on the front page."

Anyway, one good thing did come of this debacle: I learned that people still read.

/end rant