Live Q&As

I'd personally favor Breathalyzer locks on newsroom computers. Seriously, it's not a good idea to make any type of legally significant decision, including publishing, under the influence and in haste. In the unlikely (and it IS unlikely) event of a lawsuit, that would make for an uncomfortable explanation. It could help establish that the story was prepared negligently.

In the past, most schools tried to get back to students by early April at the latest -- but this year it seems like a few admissions departments are running behind. (I hadn't heard about University of Michigan, but I wrote a blog post about schools that ARE announcing.)

I can't say that I'm surprised: Many colleges are celebrating receiving more and more applications (and lowering their admit rates) while not drastically increasing their admissions staff to process all of the apps. And since most schools would rather have a human than a computer pick the Class of 2015, it's going to take more time.

The sad part: Mid-April decisions only give students a couple weeks at most to decide where to enroll. After waiting months to hear back, that doesn't seem exactly fair. Fingers crossed for your son!

I take it you don't read the coverage of Congress?

hahaha, well played, Frank

Yeah, this is one of those consequences of the way publications are read online. Lots of people don't come in through the front door -- they come in through a direct link. So even if you put the biggest April Fools disclaimer in the world across the front page, that may get missed. Lots of publications have now taken to stripping a disclaimer under every byline, to deal with just this problem, and that makes sense to me.

Honestly, legal challenges almost never materialize. There are a lot of reasons for this. The biggest is that defamation is all about what would be perceived by a reasonable reader given the context. In most every case of a humor edition, there are ample contextual tip-offs not to take the story seriously. 

The adverse consequences we see are not lawsuits but protests by readers, threats of university disciplinary action, and even imposition of editorial content controls by previously hands-off schools. There was a terrible example of that a couple of years ago at Georgetown, where a misfired humor edition of the Hoya actually set back progress on trying to persuade the administration to give the newspaper its independence.

My first thought was also The Hoya, which received several sanctions from the university media board and had to hire an outside consultant to review the situation. (The rival campus mag reported the findings in great detail.)

And there are other avenues than courtrooms: Some newspapers risk losing student fee funding or the ability to distribute all over the city.

Great bundle of questions. Schools are, with some justification, more proprietary about what goes into the publications they fund and that bear their names. So there's a heightened sensitivity in seeing outrageous images or drawings or off-color language in what the school may consider "its newspaper" or "its magazine." But that doesn't mean some schools are not threatening discipline based on what students post on social networking sites, especially if the posting is publicly viewable. There are serious constitutional questions being thrashed out in the courts now over how far schools can reach off-campus, but those questions have not stopped them from trying. 

I loved that prank!

For those who don't remember: Last year, Johns Hopkins announced that it was dropping that pesky first "s" and becoming John Hopkins. The president put out a statement saying, "we strongly suspect the extra 's' was a typo in the first place." There were photos of the S being removed from signs and buildings. 

One frazzled reporter apparently fell for the joke for a couple minutes, but a lot of people were laughing about it. And now, hopefully, everyone remembers the proper name is JohnS Hopkins.

(Here are some other AFD pranks from last year.)

Yes! I personally can't relate to why anyone thinks it's a good idea to broadcast how drunk they were last night, but apparently it's a hobby. There definitely are schools and colleges with various types of good-conduct codes that will use students' online activity as evidence to bring disciplinary charges (e.g., if you're an athlete on a team that forbids substance abuse and you're 'outed' online as a pot smoker). I think it's a tougher case constitutionally if the school is actually expelling you for purely off-campus conduct that you confess to online -- but of course that's only true at a public institution, where due process and the First Amendment offer you some protection.

And the growing trend is for legislatures, like New Jersey's, to penalize 'cyberbullying' by college students. We're going to see legal tests emerging as to (a) what speech is punishable as bullying and (b) whether a college can constitutionally punish you just for being a bad person, even if the speech doesn't disrupt the operations of the school in any way.

In general, the most effective (and most legally safe) stories are the ones that spoof the institution as a whole rather than identifiable individuals, especially students. There was a good one last year in Maryland's Diamondback about the school changing its mascot to a giant panda, that was well-done and totally harmless.

On the pro level, you just aren't going to get better than what Google seems to come up with every year. They're just brilliant at making fun of themselves, and us.

Great question. First thing, of course, is that at a public institution where the First Amendment applies, even "offensive" speech is legally protected speech. So even a joke that goes badly wrong and hacks off half the campus is still not a lawful basis for the school to de-fund the paper, fire the editors or otherwise retaliate. 

A couple things. First, calmly (but quickly) assess how badly you screwed up. If you did something really seriously wrong, then you'll want to get out in front of it and explain, apologize and (if warranted) take some action against the offender(s) internally. That's key -- you want to show the public and the college that the newsroom has its own accountability system so that the college doesn't feel that it needs to step in and impose external controls.

Remember of course that there is no legal right not to be offended, so there's no legitimate legal exposure for a story that is merely offensive (as opposed to libelous, i.e., making false factual accusations against identifiable individuals). So while you may suffer some damage with readers and advertisers, you shouldn't be at any real litigation risk.

Lots of great advice from Frank. I would just reiterate that it's so important to not put off addressing the problem -- don't let that e-mail sit unreturned, don't forget to return that phone message. Especially with the wonders of the Internet, these things can spiral of out control if those offended do not feel like their concerns are being heard.

Ooh, such a good one. "Public figure" has a mystical meaning in the law of defamation, because a public figure is under a heavier burden to prove a libel case and rarely can do so successfully. As a journalist, you almost have to intentionally set out to destroy the person. But one should never assume that anybody who's not quite famous is going to be a public figure for libel purposes. On a college campus, you're probably safe in assuming the president and the coaches of high-profile sports teams are for sure public figures, but as to anyone else, it's a crap-shoot.

There are a couple of court cases that say that a prominent student-athlete or a high-ranking student government officer -- the key is, someone who voluntarily grabs the spotlight -- is a public figure. But unless it's the Heisman Trophy winner, they're probably only a 'limited' public figure, meaning that heightened libel standard will apply to their public life (behavior in office) but not private life (embarrassing medical condition).

The distinction shouldn't matter as long as the humor is very obvious and well-labeled -- again, something clearly understood by a reasonable person as humor should be protected against defamation liability. But we'd still advise avoiding ridicule of named students, except perhaps for ridicule about the conduct of their official behavior or their on-field behavior.

A really great question -- especially on college campuses where everyone thinks they are a big deal of some sort.

Last year a Syracuse law school student started a satirical blog called "SUCOLitis" that contained fake news but some real student and faculty names -- prompting a university investigation and months of debate. (Daily Orange story)

Here's a quick one. Rape? Never funny. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever funny. Just don't. 

The other big one is racial stereotypes. Seriously, people, it's college, not sixth grade -- aren't we past this? We've seen stories with people quoted talking in fake black or Asian dialect that, while not legally actionable, are just mean and hurtful. Definitely want to tread carefully around that subject, if you touch it at all. 

Not April Fools but... an example of what Frank mentions.

Exhibit A: Alexandra Wallace

vs.

Exhibit B: Jimmy Wong

This really is a matter of knowing your audience and your institution. If I'm at Ouachita Baptist and I'm a 100% school funded paper, I analyze that differently than if I'm at Berkeley and I'm independently funded. If you want to push the envelope with your administration, why not save that up for the investigation of their expense accounts? It's so much better on a resume to say your paper got shut down for investigating corruption than for dropping an F-bomb. 

Profanity is still legally protected speech, of course. "Obscenity" is a legal term referring to such hard-core sexual content that it has no redeeming value, and a swear word is not legally obscene, even though we call it an obscenity. You may remember a college editor in Colorado, who's now a quite successful professional journalist, managed to get an F-bomb about President Bush into print and lived to tell about it. But that probably doesn't make it a great idea.

Yay, Kansas!