Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Should Student Journalists Fight For or Against The Proposed Stadium?

Temple University has proposed building a new 35,000-seat stadium that will be primarily used for football. It would be located between Broad and 16th streets, along Norris.

When rumors of the project started floating in the fall, The Temple News wrote in an editorial:

"While the prospect of such a landmark building brings students exciting visions of football Saturdays on Main Campus filled with pep-rallies, tailgates and short walks to the game, the reality is that a new stadium would bring much darker conditions to the already tense state of relations between the community, the university and its students."


Referring to the university president, The Temple News wrote:

"Theobald cannot claim to have the best interests of the North Philadelphia community in mind while simultaneously campaigning to for a project that will be such a burden for area residents."

Should the student newspaper be so critical of a proposed project that has yet to fully take shape? Is it their job to form an opinion and influence the public?

Or should they simply present the information they discover and then present the reaction that follows?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I feel that there should be different sections in which the Temple News has different content. I feel that there should be a section dedicated to remaining objective and simply reporting the facts, while there should be another section that clearly marks that the following content is biased where Temple News expresses their opinions about the stadium. I think this is incredibly important on a college campus as well as in the news in general because you want to give someone the option to come up with their own point of view or the opportunity to hear both sides of the story, but you also want to start a discussion about something that could directly affect the people reading and working for the paper.

Dominic V. Barone said...

It's hard to gauge the effects of a project that has not yet come to form. You can make your best judgements as to how it's going to play out, but no one knows it's true effects. People think it'll be a divider or a wall built between the community and the campus. Some say it will bring the community together by putting a place where everyone can go. The Temple News should remain as objective as possible, but the tough questions still have to be asked. We still have to get as much information out as possible so that we have in front of us enough information to make an educated decision.

Anonymous said...

I believe that as journalists, the Temple News should not put their personal beliefs forward in the general section of the newspaper. The articles should simply display the findings of the journalists, and then later the reactions of the public to the information. Readers should be given the information to process on their own, to form their own opinions, instead of being swayed by those opinions of the students at the Temple News. An article like this might do better in an opinion section, as seen in multiple other newspapers. Being in the opinion section, readers would understand what kind of article it is supposed to be, instead of simply placing it in the general section of the newspaper. While I do agree with the writers that the building of the stadium will most likely be unpopular among North Philly residents I do not think supporting one side was the way to present the information.
-Owen Halsey