Ingrid, what evidence brings you to this conclusion? I for one, read the article and had little reaction to what Churchill was saying, having heard this viewpoint on the US many times before. My reaction was purely with regard to Churchill’s skills and inability to express himself. If you doubt that, consider that Churchill has eagerly and repeatedly explained his meaning at subsequent speaking engagements. A successful communicator makes his meaning clear in the writing. Who would care, if not for the fact that this is a teaching professor, writing about a subject in his area of study for several decades?

“In fact CU only gets 10% funding from the state.” Now, where do you suppose the other 90% comes from? I open my wallet every semester to pay my daughter’s tuition, so I know at least one source. Grants are taxes distributed by the government. Does the 10% include these funds? No. Will grants continue to be awarded to a university that breaks its own tenure rules? How does an alumni view this? Ingrid, the university is “given” money. Nothing is required except reasonable research, acceptable scholarship and education of students. (Having no students takes them out of the tax exempt 501(c) status.)

“but CU has its own procedures for handling academic issues and the state and RMN should not be butting in.”

Does it occur to you that some don’t believe CU has handled its responsibilities and instead sweeps problems under the rug? They are just as guilty of keeping problems secret as any other group whose funding depends on their reputation and performance. CU has not been a very good watchdog.

The press has countered this problem. If they have lied, we’ll know about that too. A free press has always been required in a democracy. Their research on facts and their editorial comments should be welcomed in a free society. Letters to the editors give every reader an opportunity to rebut any and all reports. As a last resort, our laws and courts protect us when the press publishes errors and lies. I fully expect Churchill to use that resource when the time comes.

How credible is Orson if he starts out with a bunch of white-christian-republican, right-wing, neo-con, born-again, fascist, childish name-calling? If you read what the article said, Sten Gazette has done a very credible job of nominating the Rocky Mountain News for a Captain Renault award.

Please give SG a Captain Renault award for maintaining the phony shock that the RMNews has discovered the academic version of gambling going on here, even as he counts his winnings! You ain’t credible.

You seem to be pissing into the wind here, with predictable results.

Ward Churchill is of course entitled to whatever speech he can find an audience for, even if in the end that audience is merely himself. But he is not entitled to plagiarize or lie, nor is the University of Colorado entitled to use taxpayer money to tenure a professor who was notably below the normal hurdles for obtaining tenure (and can’t even seem to string much of a concise argument together).

CU is the largest and most prestigious publicly-funded school in the state. Being made into a national laughingstock because of free speech is one thing; but being made thus because of deception, plagiarism, and bad university tenuring practices at CU’s primary campus is most definitely a serious issue in the public interest, particularly for (taxpaying) residents of the State of Colorado. So in spite of your protestations that “maybe Churchill IS bad BUT,” this story is potentially relevant. Taxpayer money is being received by CU, and in addition to that, Colorado recently allowed significant tuition hikes at its publicly-funded universities. The people whose money is being spent (or wasted, as the case may be) in the name of a good education will want to know how a mistake like Churchill happens, and how serious the mistake actually was.

Is the level of coverage being devoted to Churchill “excessive?” Perhaps, in your judgment. On the other hand, in my judgment it is comparable to the coverage the News has devoted to other major topics in the public interest while such stories remained active, such as the crime spree and arrest of accused serial rapist Brent J. Brents some months ago. If you know of news articles the News “killed” this week in order to make space for the recent Churchill human-interest series, then by all means, proceed and declare.

Otherwise, the only thing that qualifies as “hysterical” are your assertions, revealed for what they really are by all that vaguely conspiratorial talk about political opression, witch hunts, and the News’ “Republican ownership.”

Shouldn’t the newspapers spend more time reporting on important stories like the Michael Jackson trial, the run away bride, or the fact that CU football is going to be terrible for the foreseeable future because they no longer have the tools available to them to recruit top players that other big football programs have available to them. These are real stories that people care about, damn it! (Sarcasm anyone?)

I don’t know what this country would come to if the news media spent more time reported on stories that actually mattered. Thank God we have Internet blogs to read like SG that actually might stimulate freethinking. Even though I don’t agree with previous comments to this posting, I am glad that the people posting these comments are actually reading SG. They need it the most!

It’s the importance of the words and not the quantity. Consider the importance of the word “is” to former President Clinton.

S.G., read the overview article in full. Then tell me what RMN left out that might have removed doubts about Ward Churchill’s research misconduct, etc.

You say “The Rocky Mountain News has made the judgment that the Churchill story is a matter of importance to many of its readers.” Is that supposed to be a justification for their having treated it as being more important than any other news in that issue of the paper? You’re also making an assumption that the editors assign reporters and choose articles based on the importance of the subject matter to readers. You’re giving them way too much credit. From day one the Rocky Mountain News has gone out of its way to push for the firing of this one, previously obscure and irrelevant professor. Is it really a newspaper’s responsibility to investigate college professors? Didn’t we leave that behind in the 1950s?

“Your knowledge of Churchill is so pedestrian that you don’t even recognized Churchill’s own words.” Well, we’re talking about one word since accurate counting seems to be so important in this thread. There is no way the use of the word “prepared” in quotes or otherwise can be considered as quoting Churchill. Putting the word in quotes is a warning to the reader that the word does not have its usual meaning in that specific context. For that matter, it’s still bad journalism if they were in fact quoting him. Churchill said “I prepared an essay” is a long way from “An essay he ‘prepared.'’”

When you say “You will find that the questions are answered by experts in the body of the article.” If that is so, why did they print different answers or non-answers on page one?

Credit where it is due– the RMN has done a great job of stirring up feelings on issues that should be considered objectively and unemotionally by those who have the responsibility for the ultimate decision. Just spare us the pretense that it is unbiased journalism.

The front page summarized four issues that were investigated, and the newpaper’s “findings.” The editorial does indeed refer to the articles that were published on Friday, under the by-line of Laura Frank. There were two articles, and they contained four new allegations of copyright infringement. The editorial did refer twice to Friday’s paper, and we missed it. We’ll consider a re-write of our article and make that adjustment. Or, since that would destroy the context of some comments, we might try to find another way.

But there is no way we can be accused of dissecting the notices for coming articles. We dissected the four specific issues, and the findings, as printed on the front page. There was no suggestion that these were to be the topics in the remaining four days of special reporting, or that the four allegations published Friday are to be the subjects.