Pua;

I am filing a grievance against The Criterion Newspaper for their recent article in their Tuesday November 14, 2017 issue. I have attached the story link in here.

You will see in paragraph seven there is vulgar language used in a quote. Now even though these are not the words of The Criterion, yet of another student, it still falls as unethical in accordance to The Society Of Professional Journalist Code of Ethics.

I see this article as the last straw to an unprofessional, unethical and quite frankly inexperienced news staff. The editors on this staff have made an inappropriate learning environment for future journalist. The Criterion does not demonstrate use of the Associated Press Guide. A standard held to all news publications around the world, not just America.

I believe because they do not demonstrate an accurate, positive learning environment for future journalist. The Criterion editorial staff is full of students who have no prior experience with AP Style and no desire to learn of it either.

Other reasons that have led to this grievance just boils down to our student fee’s being wasted on hearing opinions in our newspaper. The Criterion offers little hard news articles regarding our campus, but have no shortage of opinion articles that they list as “news.” The level of subjectivity provided by a supposed objective newspaper is truly incomparable to other news outlets on campus, in our community, and even those distributed nationally. The Criterion does an excellent job of wasting our student fees to produce a poorly designed newspaper. I have heard from numerous of my constituents around campus who have sought out to assist The Criterion by bringing in new ideas only to be ignored by the Editor – in – Chief, Alec Williams.

Williams provides little to no learning environment for his staff. From talking to writers on staff, as well as attempting to assist The Criterion myself last semester, they seem completely uninterested by the opinions of those outside of their group of friends. From the outside looking in, it seems Williams has built a good team bond among his editors, but they have failed to provide a growing learning environment for all their writers which is bound to set The Criterion up for failure following their graduation.

In my four years of working for news publications ranging from school newspapers to nationally distributed magazines I have never seen such a lack of professionalism on any level of work. I truly do not support that my student fee’s go towards paying such a vulgar, immature editorial staff.

I hope we can get this resolved ASAP.

Thank you,

Richard Nguyen
91.3 KMSA Sports Director
Language, Literature, and Mass Communications Senator
Colorado Mesa University
(703) 203-6442