Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies- Gossip Culture at Wittenberg

Being a newspaper reporter or a purveyor of journalism in any way, you learn to get your ear to the grindstone and be open to find a story wherever you can find it. Sometimes it comes in the form of a rumor. Like the Fleetwood Mac album title, rumors are the lifeblood of what I do. They fuel what could start as the mention from somebody's office assistant and end up being the next day's headline.

Wittenberg's especially good at this rumor-mongering. Especially when it comes to personal information after a night of excessive drinking. Everything from the sexual exploits of your sorority sister to the identity of that guy who drove his car onto Alumni Way, the rumor mill can be your friend if you like to dish the dirt.

But there is a nice side to the mill. It can get me the story, and it can help me track down sources. In some situations everyone's willing to tell you anything, but in some you have to be more covert. Journalists thrive on this. The Washington Post took down the Nixon White House using a secret, rumored source nicknamed "Deep Throat." If something is going on inside of a faculty meeting, some loose-lipped secretary or student worker turns into a spiraling mess of words, accusations, and eventual things that we can fill columns inches with.

But the downside to this cyclone of craziness is that with the start of any good piece of gossip comes the inevitable telephone effect. What starts off as WittFest being moved because of rain, ends up being WittFest is cancelled because Dean Kelly doesn't want us to drink. Is it that we want the salacious piece of news to carry on that we're willing to embellish a bit? How can we use these gabby people to our advantage if they keep changing the story? Boasters and overly talkative people: here's a message to you. Help me out! Get your stories straight so that I can get mine straight too. I want to be able to have story ideas that are founded on more than the potential you hear on the street. Get me a better story because you got the facts straight. Everyone should become a little bit of a reporter themselves, because then when I ask around it's not a series of "I don't knows" and "I'm not sures" but rather a well-informed "Oh well this is what happened." Give me an inch so I can make a mile of headway on it.