Local: Red & Black Staff Quits
Since I know there are some alumni reading along, you should know that late Wednesday a significant percentage of the editorial management team at The Red & Black quit. They have launched a new web site, Red & Dead, with updates on what has happened. Their Twitter feed was suspended late last night, which I suspect was an automated response due to the sudden volume of followers.
The staff left after questions of who would have final editorial control of the publication were raised in a memo.
The people at the top have never liked the Red and Black. I’m frankly surprised they didn’t try something like this sooner.
The tragedy of all this is that the entire staff could quit, the paper could shut down, and no one at the top would care.
As a reminder, the Red and Black is fully independent of the University and have no control over it. Having talked with most of the major parties involved with this, there is nothing that hints the University’s administration had anything to do with this – this all started when the newspaper’s board of directors sent one of their own into the building this summer to “consult” and report back. That board member went way too far and exercised what I, and many others, believe to be some incredibly poor judgement.
Thankfully, the board has come to its senses. They have two more moves to make – putting every editor back in their post and beginning the process of reconstituting the board itself – and the paper will return to normal and be much stronger for it.