A few months ago, when I was Lantern editor, I and several other editors went to a lecture hall of about 100 students and let them ream us for more than an hour. The complaints covered a wide range of issues, but the most common complaint wasn’t about reporting or mistakes, but the content. Basically, The Lantern is boring, they said.
Students said they didn’t care about things like the financial issues of the university or student government, and that they wanted more entertaining articles — articles of political scandal and big-name conflict. That’s not surprising. It’s a well-known fact in journalism that people love to read about three things: sports, crime and sex. It’s morbid, but people like to read about misfortune a lot more than they like to read about good deeds. It’s what people are drawn to.
While it was disconcerting that people don’t care about university issues like these (you should, by the way; it’s your school and it’s your money), we did take student complaints to heart. We may not be able to afford to give you national stories about big names, and while we don’t have the resources to be at every crime scene, we can give you a healthy dose of scandal from some big names at our university: professors.
Move over Kate Gosselin. We’ve got a pair of university personnel embroiled in a tragic tale of love gone wrong, but better. Instead of the typical male aggressor, we’ve got an alleged younger female aggressor. And she’s a former research assistant and student. And the couple may have had sex on campus. This is even better than professors calling each other gay leprechauns and saying they want to punch each other in the face.
The most entertaining bit of this story is that neither of these “adults” can take responsibility for their actions. That’s the common theme in all of our stories about these scandalous professors. They act crazy and then blame everyone but themselves. They come up with outrageous excuses, like that the red negligee was not sexual because their favorite color is actually blue, or that they were on Ambien so they don’t really remember having sex. Really, Loren Babcock? And now you are going to sue Ohio State because you decided to have an affair with a research assistant and ruin your own life? Classic.
Before my glee veers toward the mean-spirited, know that I’m also happy because I think the Lantern staff tried to give something new to our readers. I’m happy because we gave our critics a story that veered from the normal Lantern fare they complained about.
Tackling these kinds of stories is difficult and risky for a professional, so I think it’s admirable that we have students willing to go for this kind of story. The reporting for this story began before spring break, and so I know that the staff worked really hard.
