Recent actions by the Houstonian’s editorial staff in response to letters to the editor have been extremely childish, petty, and unprofessional. It is improper for a newspaper with any sort of integrity to exact revenge upon their readers by printing a completely blank page in one issue and then unedited letters from the student body in the next with captions essentially saying, “Look, the public is stupid and makes grammatical mistakes, too.” While it is true that the public often makes errors in their writing, the Houstonian is supposed to be a professional student run university newspaper. The job of your editors and staff is to edit the newspaper to ensure that the articles and columns are as free of grammatical and spelling errors as possible. The public has no such editors to critique their writing, thus it is much more understandable and forgivable that they would make mistakes. Unfortunately, the Houstonian is frequently littered with grammatical and other errors that the editors let slip by. Take a look through the Houston Chronicle, or other university newspapers such as The Battalion at Texas A&M, and you will not frequently find such mistakes. Editors at those papers who edited as the Houstonian editors often do would most likely not retain their jobs. If the Houstonian wants to be perceived as a professional publication, the staff should hire someone to edit the paper who is capable of catching and correcting these ever-present mistakes. The staff should also refrain from engaging in unprofessional activities like those that occurred last week in the paper.
Regards,Ben Campbell