In the olden days, when all mail was snail mail, there was a rote piece of wisdom.
If someone made you mad or, if you felt you had been wronged, the thing to do was to sit down and write (or type, banging on the keys of a manual typewriter could be very cathartic) a letter to the perpetrator. When you’d poured all your anger and frustration and whatever else you wanted to dump onto the villain onto that paper, you were supposed to take that letter and put it in a desk drawer.
The next morning, you pulled it out and read it. If it still sounded good to you, you mailed it. If it didn’t — and it usually didn’t — you tossed it or shredded it or burned it and patted yourself on the back for have such good judgment that you could save yourself from foolish mistakes.
Nowadays, we live in an era of instant foolishness.
Think something, anything, and you can text it or tweet it or e-mail it anywhere and everywhere — or make it part of your Facebook status. Or your Gmail status. Or blog it. Or make a quick video and post it on YouTube.
The opportunities to embarrass yourself on a worldwide stage are virtually limitless.
Unfortunately, the hurt and humiliation generally generated by these things isn’t as fleeting as the impulse that pushes the message out there in the first place.
In those olden days, authority figures were forever threatening young n’er do wells with having something or other engraved on their permanent record. Of course, there never was any such thing. But now there is, in a manner of speaking.
Things out on the Web don’t die a quick and easy death. They can be frustratingly resilient. And damaging. Stories of people who lost jobs because of the drunken party pictures on their Facebook page aren’t news any more. The story of the professor who asked in one of those public-private internet spaces what her students’ parents would think if they knew what a fraud she was is a little fresher, but it illustrates the same principle. Stuff out on the Web is really out there. Other people can see it.
The oldest internet goofball mistake is hitting “reply all” on an e-mail when the message you’re about to send isn’t something you’d want everyone on the list to read.
This comes up, of course, because such a thing happened at The Cavalier Daily.
It was a simple thing, really. Someone sent something in, asking that it appear in the next day’s paper. It got to the paper about 7 p.m., which is a little late to begin the verification, editing and production process. It was an unreasonable request, but the people who made the request didn’t know that. Nevertheless, the person who got the e-mail typed something snarky ending with “Idiot.” Then the staffer hit “reply all.”
Two minutes later, another message went out saying “just kidding” and saying when the column might run.
The issue was dealt with pretty quickly internally. And, from what I can tell, the people who should have been (and were) offended also have enough respect for The Cavalier Daily and its staff to know this wasn’t representative behavior. The concern expressed was less about the damage done to the feelings of the people insulted than about the damage this kind of thing could do to the paper. “… [A]n email like this hurts The Cavalier Daily’s legitimacy with me and with anyone who gets hold of it,” wrote someone outside the paper’s staff who got hold of the e-mail. “I am hopeful that you will hold your own staff to those standards of journalistic excellence, as well, even behind the scenes. I don’t doubt you will.”
I don’t doubt it, either.
Andrew Baker, the editor in chief, has convinced me of it.
You’ve probably noticed that, except for Baker, I haven’t used any names in this. No doubt some of you will ferret out who owns the missing names. And some of you will think I’m wrong to leave the names out. Maybe you’re right. But here’s my thinking on that.
First, The Cavalier Daily is a student newspaper. And students, by definition, are supposed to be learning. I expect students to make mistakes. That’s part of learning. Second, you don’t need to know the names involved to get the point.
This was a dumb thing to do. It could not only hurt feelings; it could hurt The Cavalier Daily’s reputation and credibility. I’m sure Baker and other Cavalier Daily leaders will do what they can to make sure that doesn’t happen — and to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.
For some folks, that won’t be enough. For those folks I have a suggestion. Once you’ve figured out who sent the offending e-mail, hold a real old fashioned stoning. Gather a big crowd and a big pile of stones and maybe some broken brick chunks out on the Lawn and go to it.
Just one rule: Someone who’s never tweeted, texted, e-mailed, blogged, posted, written or said something dopey, stupid or insulting has to throw the first rock.
Tim Thornton is The Cavalier Daily’s ombudsman. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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