OCC's anti-Mac stance gets attention of MacDailyNews

This is what happens when you take on Bosley AND Macintosh computers...

New Jersey college student newspaper adviser ousted for using Apple Macs
MacDailyNews Take: Macintoshes dominate newsrooms around the world; appropriately so, since Apple brought desktop publishing to the world with the Mac. To not use a Mac for a student newspaper would be a fine example of not preparing your students for the real world...

More Asbury Park Press coverage

Here are a couple of recent Asbury Park Press stories about Bosley's plight:

Paper adviser's ouster stokes free speech - Dec. 21, 2005
Written by Arthur Z. Kamin, an independent journalist and journalism educator who once served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Targum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Journalists' group takes up cause of ousted adviser of college newspaper - Dec. 19, 2005

Let your voice be heard

To let the powers that be at Ocean County College know how you feel, please join me in writing letters to the editors of the Asbury Park Press and Ocean County Observer. Use the links to send letters via e-mail to the respective newspapers, or use the addresses below for regular mail:

Larry Benjamin/Editor
Asbury Park Press
3601 Highway 66
PO Box 1550
Neptune, NJ 07754

Helen Fitzsimmons/Editor
Ocean County Observer
8 Robbins Street
Toms River, NJ 08753

Articles & opinions from the OCC Viking News

Obviously, the most recent issue of the Viking News includes several news articles and opinions about Prof. Bosley's situation. Here are some links:

Adviser, 3 faculty members terminated
"What counted was the college published an article of investigative journalism, which did not place the administration in the most positive light," said Elizabeth Mitchell professor of English and literature, at the board of trustees meeting Monday and protesting the termination of Karen L. Bosley, current adviser of Viking News, effective at the end of this academic year...

Veep of college advancement 'duly impressed' by Press writer
"I believe you will be duly impressed with Joe's experience in the world of journalism, along with his many awards and teaching experience at Monmouth University" said Tara Kelly, OCC's vice president of college advancement in a recent electronic mail that urged letting her set up an interview with Joe Adelizzi, OCC's new director of student media...

...The job description calls for the person to have a master's degree and at least two years of college teaching. According to Adelizzi, he "does not know anything about technology" and has no college degrees and little college-teaching experience. He said he does have more than 20 years of media work as, among other things, a sports writer and former sports editor for the Asbury Park Press, and, he said, he taught a sports writing course at Monmouth University last year.

Letter: Staffer praises adviser's work
...Bosley has been nothing but supportive and encouraging in my endeavors to pursue a career in music journalism. She has not only been my professor but continues to be a mentor and friend...

Viewpoint: Adviser removal part of censorship
The First Amendment of the Constitution awards the right to freedom of speech to everyone; however, the administration at OCC would have you believe otherwise....

The first of the stories linked above mentions that Mr. Adelizzi advised Dr. Bosley that the "prevailing standard at newspapers nationwide is a P.C.-based system." What Mr. Adelizzi and the administration are having a problem understanding is that Dr. Bosley's role as adviser is to teach her students all aspects of the newspaper industry. Not all of the Viking News staffers are going to be reporters. Many may go on to become page designers and photographers who will use Macintosh computers throughout their careers.

Also, journalism doesn't just include newspapers. There are magazine publishers, graphic design houses and public relations firms. I don't know what the studies say about Mac vs. PC use in these industries, but I wonder if the OCC administration even considered researching that. Or did the powers that be just get their information from a hack like Adelizzi?

As far as the aspiring reporters are concerned, it doesn't matter if they are using Macs or PCs since they can run word processing software on either platform. So why is it such a big deal that the students are learning on Macintosh computers? That argument is complete hogwash!

Oh, there is one thing you can't do on a Mac that you can do on a PC...on a Mac, you can't open an .exe file that turns out to be a virus designed to attack Windows-based computers.

Well, I'm a former Bosley student and Viking News staff member. I went on to receive a bachelor's degree in journalism from Rider University, which has a journalism lab based on the Mac OS platform. I now work in Rider's office of publications. Guess what kind of computer I use? Yep...a Mac.

Please use the information on the right-hand side of this page to contact OCC President Jon Larson and tell him what he and the trustees are doing is wrong.

AP: Groups protest Bosley's removal at OCC

According to an Associated Press story that came over the wire today, the Society for Professional Journalists and the Student Press Law Center have joined in the criticism of the decision by Ocean County College president Jon Larson and the board of trustees to remove Prof. Karen Bosley from her long-time post as adviser to OCC's student newspaper. The story also mentions that Bosley has support from College Media Advisers.

To learn more about the case, you can read the my previous post or read the complete AP story by clicking on the link above.

Here are some excerpts from the AP article:

After a closed door meeting with Larson and Kelly, the paper corrected several points in the story but later published a column about the meeting claiming the president threatened to "take action" against it and took editors to task for listening to "little devils" whispering in their ears. Kelly said the quote was inaccurate and the president did not try to threaten the editors...

...Officials at both College Media Advisers, a professional association that Bosley has been a member of since 1971, and the Arlington, Va.-based Student Press Law Center, where she was previously a board member, described the 63-year-old Bosley as a veteran student adviser respected by her peers.

"I've known Karen for 20 years, and if she believes this action was taken in an effort to limit her defense of a free student press, I'm inclined to believe her," said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center.

Please join this battle for First Amendment rights by e-mailing OCC President Jon Larson at jlarson@ocean.edu or calling him at 732-255-0400 x330 to show your support for Prof. Bosley.

Once again, thanks.

- BK

A call for help

Note: This was first posted on the Tandem with the Random blog on Dec. 13, 2005.

The headline does fit this post. However, you'll have to get through this history lesson first before it all makes sense...

As most people around here know, I wound up as a student at Rider University in the mid-90s after spending a few years trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

Just out of high school, I went to Ocean County College in Toms River, NJ, for a year and a half before I just lost interest. I was taking liberal arts courses and nothing was really exciting me so I withdrew despite only needing one more semester to get my associate's degree. After a semester off, I went back as a business administration major. But then I realized I'm much better at spending money than I am making and managing it. Plus, it just didn't mesh with my personality. So into my second semester as a business major, I dropped out again...this time for about two years.

In 1994, I was working in retail and realized I had been an idiot. I remembered how much I enjoyed writing for my high school newspaper years earlier and decided to return to OCC as a print and broadcast journalism major. As a result, I was in a couple of classes taught by a Prof. Karen L. Bosley, the adviser to the Viking News, the student newspaper at OCC.

It was under Bosley's tutelage that I honed my skill as a writer and editor. I seriously doubt I would have gone on to accomplish what I have without her. It was also Bosley who suggested one day that I check out Rider as a post-OCC academic destination.

So what is the point of all this and what does it have to do with the "call for help" mentioned in the headline of this post?

Well, thanks to OCC president Jon H. Larson and the college's board of trustees, Bosley will be out as adviser to the Viking News next June. Why? According to this Asbury Park Press story, Bosley was told it was because the newspaper contained too many errors and that because students weren't being properly prepared for the real world since they use Apple Macintosh computers rather than Windows-based PCs.

First of all, as RegretTheError.com shows, there are plenty of mistakes being made in professional publications around the globe. It would be great to publish an error-free newspaper, but considering I see a minimum of three mistakes a day in widely circulated Associated Press stories, I can't imagine that has ever happened.

And if students are not being properly prepared for the real world by using Macintosh computers, then why is the Rider Journalism Lab chock full of Power Macs? My first experience with a Mac came in the Viking News office. Guess what computer I use at work today? Yup, you guessed it...a Mac.

If anything, the problem lies within the newspaper industry. During my time working at the Ocean County Observer and during a visit to The Times of Trenton in the mid 90s, I was amazed by the antiquated hardware and software being used in those operations. I don't know if things have changed or not since then, but I wonder how exactly you can prepare students for the future when the industry for which you are preparing them is still living in the past.

But I digress...

This move by the OCC administration has nothing to do with errors in the Viking News or the students not being prepared for the real world. This has everything to do with freedom of speech and expression. The Viking News—or any collegiate newspaper run by students, for that matter—is not and should never be a mouthpiece for the administration. Bosley would not be doing her job if she put her students in that position. Student journalists need to learn how to be objective and fair, but they also need to learn how not to be puppets and pawns. If the students want to question the administration, that is their right as budding journalists.

I have read recent issues of the Viking News via the Web. There are no personal attacks going on. It is certainly not careless journalism. And I think it is one of the better student publications that I have seen. From a quality standpoint, the Viking News is right up there with many student papers at four-year colleges and universities.

And I don't know how Bosley can do a better job advising the newspaper staff. Back in my day, she stayed with us all through our production nights, helping to edit stories as well as offering advice and guidance. That's more than I can say for the advisers I had at Rider. Except for a few individual sessions, the only role they played was attending our Sunday night staff meetings and offering a critique of that week's paper. (By the way, I'm not saying that was bad...I'm just saying the professors at Rider had a much more "hands-off" philosophy of advising.)

I can't imagine anyone thinking Bosley was not doing an excellent job of teaching her students and preparing them for the real world. Anyone who thinks she is not a great teacher doesn't live in the real world.

I wish I had more time to write something more eloquent and compelling, but this is all I can muster at this time. However, if anybody who reads this cares enough about freedom of speech and expression, please take the time to e-mail the OCC President Jon Larson at jlarson@ocean.edu or call him at (732) 255-0400 x330 to let him know he is flat-out wrong when it comes to what he is doing to Bosley.

Thanks.