Why Yale publications suck

Journalism's an ugly business. In the professional ranks, journalists lie, cheat, and steal story ideas to get ahead. Although Yale's press is largely devoid of such despots and sycophants, it can be every bit as rigorous and pressure-packed as its real-world counterpart. Writers hound Yale Administrators for salient quotes. Publishers work the phone lines tirelessly to sell advertisements. And editors, at least many at the Herald, spend every Thursday night sleepless, indulging their labor of love with an exaggerated form of the joyful masochism that every Yale student knows too well. That's why I have no respect for most student publications at this school.

While scores of Yalies at the Yale Daily News and the Herald work tirelessly to put out timely publications relevant to student discourse, hacks at the Yale Scientific and the Yale Political Quarterly (to name just a few) pad their transcripts with irrelevant rags that rarely hit the dining halls as scheduled. In the process, they dilute the very essence of what real editors do.

The recently passed reading period provided Yale students with their usual glut of pseudo-journalism. As always, mind-numbingly dense and irrelevant publications like Hey, Zeus! greeted students whose eyes were already exhausted from studying for exams and writing research papers. As a result, even fewer folks read these student publications than might have otherwise. So why is reading period such a popular release date? Because the excessively numerous editors of each magazine were simply too disorganized—or too lazy—to put out their work any sooner. Even the sweet-sounding Yale Journal of Ethics, which merely rehashes old student essays that not even the authors themselves would care to read, has somehow been unable to update its web site since 1996. The editors of most Yale student publications, it would appear, treat their work with all the love and timely attention that they lend to their ForMAC papers. As a result, their readership does too.

But these editors are no fools. They may not get local respect for their efforts, but those prestigious law schools and scholarship committees love those three magic words: "editor-in-chief." Counter-intuitively, most of these silly magazines have two such positions, accompanied by many other prestigious-sounding posts like "managing editor," "publisher emeritus," or "editor-at-large." These gargantuan boards undermine the same specialized and independent voice that Yale's fringe publications are supposed to provide. So when we look at the shameful track record of magazines like Type and the endless proliferation of publications that fill nonexistent or invented niches, we must question the extent to which Yale's student press truly advances our social or intellectual discourse. In actuality, self-advancement—the ability to look good on paper and to feel important and in charge—powers Yale journalism. In this way, those self-anointed subversives at the Yale Alternative are just like the rest of us.

Maybe I'm just rationalizing the fact that I sold out to the Herald instead of pursuing my dream: founding and editing a quarterly journal of Middle Eastern golf ethics written by local preschoolers. But somehow, when the sun came up over the Herald's cozy Park Street office each Friday morning of last semester, I felt a strange sense of fulfillment knowing that the decisions I had made and the work I had done were going to have a tangible effect on at least one reader. Of course, I could be wrong about all this. Certainly, some publications like Rumpus and Light & Truth have had a very notable and visible campus influence. And perhaps some other so-called "editors-in-chief" believe that their publications are not mere wastes of paper and money. And I challenge them to say so by writing a letter to the Herald. At least that way, someone will read it.

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