A Kinder, Gentler, Editorial Policy

[Daniel P. Saraga]

Sent with permission of the author Malcom Sheppard.

This post appeared in Trent U's general discussion newsgroup over some
controversy regarding the possibility that Arthur, the university
student paper is being too confrontational regarding the issues that it
reports on.

>From: mshe...@ivory.trentu.ca
>Newgroups: trentu.general

As an ad hoc representative of arthur, I am pleased to announce a series
of new initiatives designed to make the paper more friendly than ever.
These policies include:

1] The control of controversial coverage. From now on, writers will be
required to submit articles limited to the topic of fuzzy bunnies.
Furthermore, no political agenda or biased opinion can be rendered on the
topic of fuzzy bunnies. Fuzzy bunnies cannot be portrayed in a threatening
or threatened light, or in a negative or perjorative manner.

It is recognized that potential contributors do not always see eye to eye
on issues of importance at school, in the community, in politics, or in
the world at large. Seeing a contrary opinion could intimidate potential
writers, so that aspect of Arthur has been eliminated so as to facilitate
greater student participation.

An example of an appropriate article using the new guidelines follows:

FUZZY BUNNIES
Malcolm Sheppard

Fuzzy bunnies are nice.

2] Control of opinion pieces. To prevent the predominance of any one
political view, all political opinion pieces must agree. Because of the
difficulty of achieving this, the topic of discussion will also be limited
to fuzzy bunnies, particularly since the public opinions of most major
political factions tend to agree on the editorially sanctioned view of the
aforementioned bunnies.

For example:

PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVES AT TRENT AND FUZZY BUNNIES
Naresh Raghubeer

Tories like fuzzy bunnies too.

3] Letter content will be limited to muted approval of the content of the
paper for example:

MORE PRAISE FOR FUZZY BUNNIES

I thought that Malcolm Sheppard's article, "Fuzzy Bunnies", was nice.
I also like fuzzy bunnies. They are nice.

J.Q.P.

4] All staff will be required to cease any behaviour that might be
construed as unpleasant or threatening. It is understood that to allow any
member of the staff to abuse their admittedly mighty standing in the
community would be a shame, and send potential readers and writers away
from the warm and fuzzy comfort of the paper.

For example:

Person on the Street: Oh, look, its Sara Forbes-Roberts, co-editor of the
Arthur? hello!

Sara Forbes-Roberts: Fuzzy bunnies are nice.

We hope you will find comfort in the paper in the future.

M.


--
From the RHF archives as selected by Brad Templeton, Maddi Hausmann and
Jim Griffith. This newsgroup posts former jokes from the newsgroup
rec.humor.funny. Visit http://www.netfunny.com/rhf to browse the RHF pages
and archives on the web.

This newsgroup does not accept submissions. See rec.humor.funny for that.