A confusing Sunday night

The noise outside my office door is growing steadily into a crescendo of sound. Youthful voices challenge each other for dominance as everyone tries to talk at the same time and tries to be heard at the same time. It is Sunday night and the newspaper staff is gathering for its latest meeting. The staff meets Sundays and Wednesday’s at 8 p.m., and I, as the adviser, am here. I don’t actually control the meeting. That’s the editor’s job. I do, however, offer criticism of the last issue or two in an effort to get them to improve as reporters and editors, graphic designers and photographers. Lately I’ve come to believe it just might be a lost cause.

As the frost on my head grows ever whiter, and the waddle of my neck grows like that of an old Tom Turkey, the failure of my voice to crack through this cacophony is more and more evident.

Over the past three weeks I have been attempting to convince the young editor and his staff that they, talented as they are, do not have all the keys to the journalism kingdom. Their stories are poorly edited, with quality greatly dependent on the raw talent of the writer. Of course that means there’s a great disparity between stories in terms of style, grammar, quality of thought, you name it. While John McCain has been making much of Obama’s off-hand remark about “putting lipstick on a pig,” the newspaper staff seems to believe that just a bit more color on the front page will hide all their sins.

Perhaps I have finally reached a point in my career in which I have failed to understand how to reach a new crop of students. Each year it has grown worse, from the standpoint of convincing them they can do better with just a little more work, until this year when it seems the feeling among the senior staff is they already know what to do and no one can really tell them anything they don’t already know. So, they don’t listen.

I wonder if a younger hand might cut through the bullshit with more force than I seem to be able to slice it. Then I watch and listen and I have come to believe it is not an age thing at all. It is an attitude, a mindset that refuses to admit any culpability.