AJR  Drop Cap
From AJR,   January/February 1994

J-School Students Saved from Photos   

By Patrick Boyle
Patrick Boyle is a reporter for the WashingtonTimes.      


I| one photo, a topless woman feeds a man spaghetti as they lounge in bed. In the other, a bulldog sits on an American flag.

Offended yet?

Plenty of professors and students would be, insists the publisher of the popular journalism textbook, "News Reporting and Writing." In January, Brown & Benchmark Publishers of Madison, Wisconsin, plans to distribute the sixth edition of Melvin Mencher's best-selling work – but without the photos, which were to appear in a chapter on defining standards of taste.

That angers Mencher, who at one point hoped to stop publication of his own book. And it has academics discussing a larger question: Has political correctness turned some journalism professors into cowards? Are they supporting censorship in, of all places, a book designed to train reporters?

The lovers and dog have wreaked havoc before. The photos were first published in 1991 in a student annual at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Yearbook Editor Jeffrey Gremillion subsequently lost his job and sued the school.

The case caught the eye of Mencher, a former newspaper reporter who taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for 28 years and who has published with Brown & Benchmark since 1977. For years, his chapter, "Taste – Defining the Appropriate," included three photos that had appeared in college news-papers during the 1960s. The most shocking, Mencher says, was poet Allen Ginsberg posing nude with one hand covering his genitals.

The author says he decided to add the Louisiana photos to show that while definitions of taste change, there are always editors who push the boundaries.

Stan Stoga, Mencher's editor at Brown, thought his author might be pushing the limits himself. Stoga says that after Mencher submitted his latest edition, Brown asked five journalism professors to review the photos. (Stoga wouldn't provide their names to Mencher or AJR.)

The responses were not good. Besides a few who believed readers might see the dog photo as a desecration of the flag, Stoga says, four found the spaghetti shot distasteful and feared it could prompt sexual harassment charges. One professor suggested Mencher simply describe the photos; otherwise, he might be forced to assign another text to avoid a "meaningless controversy."

Stoga insists Brown's decision was strictly business. "When people tell me they seriously doubt they would [assign] the book because of those photos," he says, "I have to stand up and take notice."

Mencher doesn't want his book published unless the photos are included, but his contract with Brown allows the publisher to proceed without his approval. A spokesperson for parent Times Mirror Co., which also owns the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and Baltimore's Sun, says its book companies "make their own editorial decisions."

Many professors say they find the controversy unsettling – and ludicrous. "It's silly," says Dean Mills, head of the journalism school at the University of Missouri and one of 10 academics asked by AJR about Brown's decision. "How can you have [students] think about the issue without showing them what the issue is?"

Some professors worry the episode signals a trend toward sanitizing journalism education. Says Wayne Worchester, a professor at the University of Connecticut, "What most disturbs me is that the publisher is responding to complaints from journalism faculty." That some academics fear offending students with controversial material, he adds, "says a hell of a lot about the quality of journalism education in some parts of the country."

Angered by Brown's decision not to print the Louisiana photos, Mencher says he told the publisher to pull his three 1960s photos as well. Students scanning the 26th chapter of his updated "News Reporting and Writing" now will see nothing but harmless words.

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