Here is the story: WIP MAYDAY 

is it can't decide if it's reportage or editorial. It is a clunky attempt at Participatory Journalism ala H. Thompsen, T. Wolfe but lacking any literary merit. Not only are the editorial portions pedantic, it got the reportage wrong.

The piece may, and I stress may, pass lower standards of Day Of blogging but with the luxury of time between the event and publication a real Editor should have really Edited the piece. I would have corrected the factual errors and split it into two pieces. Please do not construe my words as an endorsement of the editorial position of the piece. I do not. But it is not the job of an editor to censor. That is rightly the realm of a Publisher, in this case the WIP Collective.

The good folks at WIP put out Wip as a love with an unpaid, under-staffed group doing the best they can. WIP has been muck-raking hyperlocal media for decades now and I for one appreciate that. Wip sets some pretty lofty goals for themselves. This time they missed.

Good critique Drew.

As for the criticism of the article in question, I do have to apologize for the inaccuracies. We were on a very tight schedule, and we are not a publication that is accustomed to working very quickly. Taking more time for fact checking would have delayed our production schedule, which would have delayed our distribution schedule, and so forth. As for the Medic, I am pretty sure the author was unaware of this injury. Personally, I am very sorry to hear that someone was hurt.

I have to disagree with Drew Hendrick's interpretation of the article as arguing in favor of rock-throwing. Because of the last minute nature of this submission, the decision to publish it was made at the last minute after just a few people had read the story. (Usually, we have the opportunity for a wider breadth of opinion at our editorial meetings.) But the pressure of our publication schedule was upon us, acutely -- we received the piece after 12:30 a.m. on May 2, and our print run was scheduled for 9 a.m. that day. All of us who made the decision to print the piece were upset by the events of Mayday, and felt that they were very destructive to movements that community activists have spent a lot of time and effort in building -- indeed, we spoke of little else as we finished laying out and proofreading the May issue. The article we published does give some consideration to arguments in favor of escalating tactics, tactics with which I disagree. We didn't feel that it advocated for such tactics, however, but presented arguments on both sides.

It will be interesting to see what is submitted on this topic for the June issue. I anticipate that we will have time to consider submissions as a group, as usual, and it is very likely that we will publish something condemning the tactics of the vandals, and deploring their detrimental impact on community activism. We may also receive and publish something more sympathetic to the rationale of people who would use such tactics, if we decide as a group that it warrants publication. Even while I do not advocate violent tactics, I feel it is important to listen to, rather than silence, people who feel oppressed. Kind of like our mission statement. And I would rather read about it in WIP than on the capital wall.