If you had beef with last week’s issue, chances are you weren’t the only one. While the editorial team were preoccupied making sure the drugs content of the Drugs Issue was spic and span and we didn’t accidentally nark on a dealer or out someone for a drug habit – well, except for ourselves – the rest of the mag was riddled with more mistakes than your borer-beetled hardwood floor.
Early last week my vibe was that of a cancel-cultured celebrity sitting in my beige-and-boring-guys-I’m-so-down-to-earth room before a camera, no make-up, eyes red, and making the following apologies and corrections:
Correction 1: The centrefold was uncredited. The lovely Carina Page worked incredibly hard on the Drugs Issue centrefold and deserved to get her flowers for it.
Correction 2: The UniPol article was framed in a way that completely undermined the work of staff there to make it an inclusive environment for every student, not just the gym bros who felt inconvenienced by their dumbbells being in a different place. That is to say it sorely lacked the balance it needed.
Correction 3: The Student Support article had multiple factual inaccuracies and implied that the previous Queer Support Coordinator was absent in her duties, an untrue and unfair framing that was completely unintentional. The article was about an out of date website – plain and simple. The online version has been removed.
Correction 4: We somehow reported on a Market Day that didn’t happen? This one was completely on me. Harry, one of our volunteers, pitched a news article about an upcoming market day. When it was passed over to me for editing, I misunderstood and thought it was about one that had already happened and I’d missed because of being glued to my office chair or attending meetings. So uh, yeah. My bad.
The online articles have been amended to correct these mistakes and I’ve made personal apologies to those impacted. While the online versions of articles are more or less the enduring record of Critic since we only print 3,000 physical copies of the magazine per week, going back to correct errors is obviously something that we try to avoid. Our editorial process includes multiple layers of checking and re-checking to catch those sorts of things. Ultimately, if anything falls through the cracks it’s on me – especially if I was the one to write or add the fuck-ups.
But that’s a very important part of Critic: eating humble pie when we need to. We act as a fourth estate – like a “watch dog” for those who haven’t taken MFCO103, an important part of a healthy democracy. Democracy means transparency, openness, and a willingness to criticise in the name of the greater good. It also means being criticised right back.
Every week, the Critters fan out across campus with glee to point fingers, prod, ask questions, and generally put feet to the fire. It’s all in the name. But that does and should come with pushback. Hold us accountable. Criticise us back. If we get shit wrong, that’s us failing to do our jobs, which is to inform and entertain students in equal measure. You should be able to trust that when you read the magazine on a Monday morning that it’s a fair and accurate representation (with some minor piss-taking included).
At the end of the day, it all comes out in the wash. OUSA Prez Liam’s even told Critic to be harder on the Exec. This was after Issue 3 of the magazine where he was in four of nine news articles – in one admitting to lack of preparation for a Treaty Principles Bill submission and another with criticism of the Exec-driven BDS posture that cost OUSA an unspecified but big chunk of money. Hanna and I had even been nervous about coming across as mean.
I’m inspired by Liam’s attitude, though. To him, it’s all about the bigger picture. Sure it can suck to be publicly called out for a mistake, but what sucks even more is the impact of your mistake on others. What’s important is how you address and redress that mistake (and that I haven’t yet had to reset the ‘days without a crossword error’ tally in the office yet). But really – I promise we’ll do better. If not, next time I’ll whip out a ukulele.