“NINTENDO TRUCK HIJACKED,””WOMAN CHARGED IN REAL LIFE ‘FATAL ATTRACTION’ MURDER,””SAKHAROV’S BRAIN WILL BE STUDIED,””BOY LOSES LEG IN MINE FIRE.”

These were some of the headlines in the state, nation, and international sections in The Star on Feb. 9. They ran the same day Mark McGowan’s column chastised NIU students for apathy towards important world events.

Of course, I should credit the cute little USA Today style graphs we now have on every other page, telling us all kinds of important facts, things like “what men look for in women” and “what women look for in men.” I guess what none of us should be looking for in The Star is journalism.

How wonderful to sit in The Star newsroom discussing “dreams” and sigh in piteous contempt for the campus slugs who read Calvin and Hobbes. Mark’s pseudo-intellectual condescension for the masses is quite a generous outpouring of feeling. I’m also very glad that he finds the absorption of empty presidential speeches politically enlightening. I find them appalling.

The sad thing is that I would normally be inclined to sympathize with his views: Apathy is a widespread problem on campus. But your smug attitude leaves me, well…apathetic. Please realize that there are other people in the world who, although don’t gossip in The Star newsroom, attempt to keep informed about world events.

Journalism might very well be “the first draft of history.” But writing about a problem for a newspaper is not the same thing as solving it. Some people write about history, other people make history.

Ted Manning

Senior

English