 "Photo: Liz Belfer | Daily Trojan")
Every day, the Daily Trojan prints at least one lie.
Certainly, this newspaper publishes some issues that are reported accurately and faithfully, and some that are not.
But the daily deception comes before any editor places words and pictures on a page. In the flag, the main banner on the front page that identifies the newspaper, editors have lied to the student body - and, more significantly, to prospective students - for years.
The Daily Trojan purports to be the "student newspaper of the University of Southern California." This newspaper, as far as I can tell, has never been a student newspaper. It is uniquely a university newspaper. And if the Daily Trojan really wants to be a student newspaper, the first step is recognizing it isn't.
While the student editors and reporters who work for this newspaper are free to print whatever they wish, calling the Daily Trojan a student newspaper is like saying the Tribune Co.-owned Los Angeles Times is independent.
The university owns the newspaper and, as such, the top executive at the Daily Trojan is Vice President of Student Affairs Michael L. Jackson, not a student editor. The university controls the Daily Trojan's many resources, and in doing so, dictates the newspaper's future. Jackson can also shape the newspaper's present.
Jackson violated the Daily Trojan's supposed independence most blatantly when he overturned a November election selecting me as this semester's editor in chief.
Likewise, Jackson has the power to suspend publication of the newspaper and even alter specific editorial content. Just because he hasn't done anything drastic doesn't guarantee that he won't, or that he hasn't already beneath our noses.
After Jackson's unilateral dismissal of the staff vote came an ego-stroking outpour of anger from former Daily Trojan staffers. Most active was Brendan Loy, a DT alumnus and current graduate student at Notre Dame, who slammed the administration with posts on his blog, brendanloy.com. Among the more than 100 comments posted in response to his posts, it becomes clear that the administration has long influenced the editorial content of the Daily Trojan.
One post from a former staffer said that while the university doesn't blatantly censor articles, it influences coverage by offering advice "dispensed in a flattering, you-know-dear-you're-better-than-this sort of way." And last year, a pair of graduate journalism students wrote more than a dozen pages for a class project with stories of questionable administrative involvement in the Daily Trojan's editorial content. Their paper indicates a passive, almost tacit, censorship of collegiate freedom of the press.
Further, university employees have unbridled access to every issue of the Daily Trojan before it goes to press and have the ability to pull issues before any ink hits the newsprint.
As a high school student, I immersed myself in print journalism. A college's journalism department was my No. 1 priority in where I went to college, and an accompanying student newspaper was essential. If I had known the true structure of the Daily Trojan and the university's control, I don't know if I'd call myself a Trojan.
If the Annenberg School for Communication and USC want to attract the top journalism students from across the nation, they should have a vested interest in transitioning the Daily Trojan into an independent publication. Currently, there is no impetus on university officials to give students control of the newspaper because prospective students are deceived into thinking that they will work for a free press.
It's time for honesty.
Now it remains to the staff of the Daily Trojan to decide whether they want to be true to their readers and expose the need for change, or whether they are content with maintaining the status quo and submitting the future of the paper to the university.
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Zach Fox is a print journalism senior from Cincinnati. His column, "The News Hotness," runs Thursdays.
