Pick of the Week

So...I almost forgot to make a post this week. My mind is like a large, large fishbowl. And lots of random things swim around in there. This week, a front page story from the September 3 issue by Michael Logli, "Senator speaks to student organization," got caught in the whirlpool of my wandering thoughts.

It's been marinating in my cerebral fishbowl for the last couple days. And it all started with the headline. It wasn't a terrible headline. I just thought that "speak to" could have been replaced with "addresses" or even better, "Senator urges campus democrats to unite." I know space and time is limited, but I felt the headline was a bit one-dimensional.

Once I got past the headline and delved into the story itself, I got confused. Obviously, Students for Barack Obama did not plan for Durbin to appear that night--the lead makes that clear. So...who did? I guess it was the College Democrats, who were mentioned in a quote from Mike Frerichs. And that's where I got confused, since mention of College Democrats seemed rather arbitrary.

I also got the impression that Students for Barack Obama attended and ran the entire event. Logli mostly focused on Students for Barack Obama, in terms of the organizations present for Durbin's appearance. Even the headline misled me since it referred to a single student organization. College Democrats were only mentioned once while Students for Barack Obama appeared in the caption and the lead.

A correction in the Daily Illini along with lunch at Basil Thai on Green St. fixed up the confusion. Lunch with a friend who used to be involved with College Democrats enlightened me with further details. As it turns out, College Democrats arranged for the event and was present that night.

My point for picking on Logli's story is that words have a funny habit of sticking in our heads when they're repeated. Logli never wrote that Students for Barack Obama was the only student organization at the event or that they ran the event. But all that repetition made it seem (at least to my poor brain) like the organization did.

Well...hopefully next week I'll have something more interesting. Until then, I have to go clean out my fish bowl...