Emerald staff on strike?

Are you following the dust up at the Oregon Daily Emerald? If not, you might want to check out this story about the Emerald news staff going on strike.

I won't try to tell the story here. It's bizarre beyond words, but apparently the students objected to a job offer to Steven A. Smith, thinking bringing him on board would someone threaten the editorial independence of the student journalists. Yes, that's the same Steve Smith who has been editor of the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore., and Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo. Smith shares his side of the story on his blog.

Forgive, me, but I find the whole thing funny, but sad. Where is the reality of the working world in this whole scenario? Journalists at a financially troubled paper choosing to go on strike? Now?

Makes me glad I am a journalist trained at Oregon State University and gained some practical experience at the Daily Barometer, although the journalism program (part of the College of Liberal Art, not a Journalism school). But the reality is, what I learned in school only got me that first newspaper job and a lot of training has happened since.

One of the things I learned outside the student environment was a point perhaps too subtle in understanding the First Amendment when I was young and more principled than experienced. The thing about freedom of the press is that freedom belongs to the people who own the press, not the people the owners hire to run the presses or cover the news.

This would all perhaps be a lot more amusing if my daughter wasn't thinking that she may want to go to the University of Oregon and study, God forbid, journalism.

On, and all you purists out there lamenting the rise of social media, guess what? I learned about the strike on Twitter.