The feeling may be shared with people on campus, and on the same note, some might oppose it. With all opinion pieces, there are differing views.

When the Northern Star ran a headline and column last week about how an athlete wasn’t getting the job done, there were a lot of opinions.

“That article should’ve never ran.”

“You suck.”

“Thank you!”

These, along with many others, were responses to that column.

What was a little more eye opening is that one e-mail came from an athlete who was disturbed by the column.

As an athlete, you are putting yourself on a platform to be in the public eye. Whether you like it or not, this is true on some level for professional, collegiate and in some cases high school athletics.

If an athlete “rides the pine,” chances are the media will not write much about that individual. While the media plays a large part into the extent someone is put in the public eye, it is their job to determine who is given more coverage than others.

Therefore, if you go out for the chess team, you are unlikely to receive as much attention compared to if you played on the football team, and even more so if you were a quarterback; considered by many the highest profile position in all of athletics.

Media coverage is going to be elevated in a high profile position with athletics. This is true with the football team as it started the season coming off a MAC Co-Championship and squeaked by a tough Wake Forest team to kick off the season.

Not a lot, if any, bad things were written about the team at that time of the year. Everything was close to perfect for the team.

Then, they went and lost their next three games against South Florida, Wisconsin and Western Illinois. Things weren’t going as well.

Why should a newspaper’s coverage be all positive when everything is not perfect? It is not the media’s job to write all peachy, sweet, loving articles.

If the NIU Sports Information Department said Joe Novak should be fired, some might question its logic on that, as they work for the university. A newspaper like the Northern Star works at, not for, the university.

Yes, the sports writers at the Star are fans of NIU, and for the most part, hope success upon all the sports, but as a journalist, you should not let that taint your articles.

When one athlete e-mailed the writer of a criticizing column, the athlete said the individual shouldn’t have written the article because he never played football. Along with that, it also said that if he played football prior to college, it didn’t matter because they hadn’t played in college on the D1 level.

If that logic is true, I can name a very extensive list of reporters, announcers and writers who would be out of a job as they report on college and professional athletics but have never played on those levels.

On the same token, maybe no one should comment on any journalists’ articles unless they themselves have written professionally, or at least on the level of any writer in question. Is that an absurd statement? Yes, but so are a lot of statements commenting on opinions, which is to be understood.

While there was a lot of negative feedback on this particular column about a football player, there were positive letters as well. Mixed reviews were the same with informal polling of football players.

“If things are going really well, we are going to get a lot of credit,” Huskie quarterback Josh Haldi said about his position. “But at the same time, if things aren’t going well, you are going to get maybe more criticism then you should. That’s just the position that you’re put in and I’ve grown to expect.”

Some feel that a writer who hasn’t been in the same shoes as anyone they write about isn’t suited to write about that person or team. Really though, many people don’t understand the logic behind journalists’ actions, especially evident by e-mails criticizing negative articles written saying that Northern Star writers have no school spirit.

It’s not about having school spirit. It’s about being a good journalist and getting out intriguing information that garners the attention of the readers.

Sure, writers could have school spirit, if they want, but only in certain circumstances. Any article written by a journalist is supposed to be full of unbiased, un-opinionated information, which very few understand. All of that is true, except for columns – the articles with the writer’s mug next to it. Yes, like this one.

In a column, the writer is free to express anything on any topic they feels free to write on, as long as it is to the editor’s discretion. If a negative article is going to be put in the paper, things aren’t perfect at this school – or at any other for that matter – so why not report on it? Newspapers are not disguised as cheerleaders who stroke the people they write about and give nothing but cheerful, shiny articles.

Almost undoubtedly, a team or person having any negatively tainted column on them can rest assured that they’ve been given their ‘props’ at one time or another.

If the star of the basketball team scores a career-high 50 points, you can bet that will grace the pages of the papers covering the team, so why not give conflicting views?