Tragicomedy

The school paper tries really, really hard to drive home the importance of their stories through dedicated reporting and quality writing. While they don't often succeed through those methods, sometimes they accidentally prove their point through the inept and clumsy attempts at reporting that those of us who read the paper have grown to expect and even, sometimes, to love.

Case in point: There was an angry protest rally on campus on Friday. The Governor of Tennessee recently announced a six percent cut in higher education funding, and people are not happy about it. They had speeches, signs, and anger, which I saw when I was walking back from a lunch meeting:



The school newspaper, known for their hard hitting headlines, gave the rally extensive coverage that included three photos, two of which had captions:



"More then 100 students"? Like there were more students, and then 100 came after that? That seems wrong, but surely a newspaper staff that boasts a news editor, three copy editors, and two chief copy editors knows the difference between "then" and "than", right?

The second caption may shed some light on the answer to that question:



I had no idea that all of the people at the rally were named Friday, but it was good of the Fridays to rally against the budget cuts. God knows that, based on the quality of the student newspaper at the state's flagship institution, higher education needs all the funding it can get. Or, in the case of the second caption, higher eduation.

We can start by spending that money on English teachers.