Hampton Script to Resume Publishing

By Shawn Chollette
Black College Wire

The Hampton Script starts publishing Oct. 13 for the academic year, after a delay imposed by the administration while it searched for an editorial adviser for the student newspaper.

Doug Smith

Editors of The Script said they had been prohibited from publishing until the vacancy for an editorial adviser was filled, and were unable to print their first edition for the school year. It was to have gone to press Sept. 29.

The paper now has three advisers, named Oct. 4 by the Script's advisory board, which is made up of journalism school administrators and student editors. The new advisers are: Doug Smith, a visiting professor of journalism, former USA Today sports reporter, Hampton alumnus and Hampton journalism school Hall of Fame inductee; Kia DuPree, a professor in the English Department; and Christina Pinkston-Betts, an English professor who has advised the newspaper on grammar.

The trio met Oct. 4 with Script editors to outline plans to begin publishing.

Smith said he had taken a leave of absence from USA Today during 1993 and 1994 to "teach a few courses and serve as an adviser to the Script, so I'm familiar with the situation.

"I'm a Hamptonian," he said, "and the incidents which took place last year involving the newspaper are a great concern of mine, so I felt the need to become involved personally and dive right in. Since I know most of the students fom having taught them, I don't anticipate any problems.

"I'm here to ensure that they minimize the number of errors and hopefully produce a paper with none."

The delay concerned Script staff, students and many in journalism. Script staff members had completed their edition, but were unable to take it to the printer.

Christina Pinkston-Betts

"The paper is done," said Talia Buford, Script editor in chief, just before the announcement of the advisers' selection. "We had stories about the Miss Hampton Pageant and the football team that needed to be printed before this weekend, but we can't do anything without an editorial adviser." After the agreement, she said she was relieved: "I'm happy that there's no more red tape and now we're able to move on and do our jobs as journalists." On the new advisers, she said, "Professor Smith is a journalist and he understands the reporting and editing facets of news. I have faith that there won't be any censorship. And we've worked with Dr. Pinkston-Betts before and she's very helpful and knowledgeable. We're looking forward to working with all them."

Several of the original stories are now outdated and will be scrapped as the staff prepares for the new publication date.

Advisers were supposed to be selected by Sept. 15, according to university rules governing student organizations. It is unclear why it took additional time for the newspaper advisers to be chosen. Also unexplained is why an interim adviser was not chosen.

The selection process might have been made more difficult by a policy change barring faculty members of the Scripps Howard School of Journalism from receiving credit for time spent working with the newspaper, a practice known as release time. That was the reason that the previous adviser, professor Kim LeDuff, resigned this summer, according to Richard Prince's Journal-isms, a column about journalists of color on the Web site of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

Talia Buford

"This semester, I have a four-course load," LeDuff was quoted as saying, explaining why she no longer has time to advise the Script. She was previously allowed to count her advising time as one of the four classes that she taught.

Students were unsure why the policy change was implemented.

Administrators and spokesmen for the journalism department and the newspaper's advisory board did not respond to Black College Wire's calls and e-mails requesting information.

Appointing advisers for the Script means more than simply fulfilling the rules in the student handbook. It was one of the policy recommendations approved last winter by Hampton's then-acting president JoAnn Haysbert and the Script editors, to resolve tensions over the newspaper's freedom.

The administration had confiscated the Script's Oct. 22, 2003, homecoming edition after Script staffers refused to run a memo written by Haysbert on the newspaper's front page. The memo, addressing efforts to correct health code violations at the university's cafeteria that had been made public in the Script's pages, was placed on page 3. A staff-produced story about the situation ran on the front page.

That incident sparked discussions with the administration about the First Amendment rights of the student-run newspaper, and the outcome has been watched closely in the journalism industry. The American Society of Newspaper Editors withdrew a $55,000 grant from the journalism program, and several newspapers editorialized in favor of the students.

The policy recommendations were supposed to foster a better environment for the students to learn to practice high-quality journalism and ensure that the administration did not again halt distribution of the Script. The Script's advisory board was established out of the task force recommendations; choosing the advisers became one of its tasks after LeDuff resigned.

Since then, however, the advisory board has endured turnover, which might also have affected the search for an editorial adviser. The board's first chairman, Earl Caldwell, a former New York Times reporter who holds an endowed chair in journalism, resigned. He said in an interview with Journal-isms that finding an editorial adviser for the Script is difficult because it is "a very huge, demanding role, and it's made tougher when the feeling is they (Script staff) feel the person is not going to be a positive asset. People are not looking for headaches."

Buford said the comment "really hurt a lot. We are trying to do our job and trying to make our school better by doing what we've learned here. Yet people are saying we're causing headaches."

Meanwhile, the newspaper has been missed. Music engineering major Markese Stain of Del Rey, Fla., said he's been concerned about the Script's silence, and misses the service the newspaper usually provides.

"I like it because of the controversial things they talk about," Stain said. "They were not afraid to talk about what was wrong with the school, and the paper had an unbiased perspective, to me. It would be nice to have The Script back in print again."

The journalism industry continued to monitor the Script's struggles during the delay.

"The school made some really important steps in improving the environment for freedom of the press last year, so there is absolutely no excuse for this foot-dragging," said Mark Goodman, executive director of the nonprofit Student Press Law Center, before the advisers had been chosen.

"I can appreciate that the search may be taking some time, but in that case, they should appoint someone on a temporary basis so the newspaper can continue publishing," said Goodman, who gave legal advice to Script editors last year.

Shawn Chollette is a student at Louisiana Tech University. Titus Ledbetter III and Bravetta Hassell, students at Hampton University, contributed to this story.

Posted Oct. 4, 2004, updated Oct. 5, 2004