Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

There’s a part of me — the part that edited his high school newspaper — that still reveres the Gray Lady as a bastion of High Journalism. But there’s a bigger part of me — the grown-up part that’s hungry for the actual news — that’s sick to death of the bowdlerizations in the Times. Witness this story:

Student Editor Keeps His Job, but Is Warned About Ethics

A headline in Friday’s Rocky Mountain Collegian hit especially close to home for the writers and editors of the college newspaper at Colorado State University.

“Collegian Editor Will Keep His Job,” it said, reporting that an independent review board that oversees The Collegian had decided to admonish, but not fire, the editor who had approved a vulgar, four-word editorial about President Bush in a space that would usually run to hundreds of words.

The unusual editorial, published on Sept. 21 in an extra-large font, contained a four-letter expletive in front of Mr. Bush’s name. The Collegian, led by editor in chief J. David McSwane, said the message was an exercise of free speech; some students on the Fort Collins campus said it was immature and insulting. [...]

So, uh . . . what did the editorial actually say? No, I don’t expect the Times — or any other American newspaper — to actually print the naughty word, and that’s just as well, since there are, no doubt, impressionable youths (and their prim elders) who would not stomach it well. But maybe the Times could do its readers the service of actually conveying the content of the four-word editorial that has provoked so much ire.

Well, the Internet is a big place, and searching it is free. It took me less than a minute to find what I was looking for in a story originally printed in the Rocky Mountain News:

300 at CSU urge firing of editor over anti-Bush profanity

FORT COLLINS — The student newspaper that stirred up a hornet’s nest when it dropped the F-bomb last week drew more fire Monday.

It also sparked thoughtful debate. [...]

On Friday, The Rocky Mountain Collegian ran a four-word editorial that read: “Taser this . . . F— Bush.” [...]

See? Was that so hard? My sensibilities have not been offended — and now I know what the fuss is about.

My plea to the Times: Join us here in the 21st century, won’t you?