I would like to respond to the reporting of The News concerning the voluntary Times New Roman (TNR) issue pullback (“TNR isse halted over risky articles,” Jan 31). The article contained incorrect statements, bias and omission of important facts. Before I begin, the only reason I’m not still editor of the TNR right now is because I’m on co-op in New York.

For starters, it’s nice that Dave Moberg, editor of the Northeastern Patriot, has a different theory than I do about the issue pullback. I just don’t understand why Moberg was quoted so extensively throughout the piece, while the TNR’s statements came from one source who was not used very much. My theory is that The News staff figured they had a clear-cut case of censorship and felt that they should assemble and fight. I think that is great, and if it ever really does happen I hope we have an ally in them.

The thing is, obscenity was the reason the issue was pulled back. The article about President Joseph Aoun was a non-issue, and to my knowledge no one from the administration saw the issue before it was pulled. The Aoun article is sarcastic and comes out in support of him; we just felt the word “douchebag” in the title was in bad taste, as I always try to be smart not vulgar, which is what I meant by certain things not fitting our style.

The articles in question were the article about The Patriot and one that was a parody of Hunter S. Thompson’s writing. The H.S.T. piece contained an explicit sex scene, which on a mere suggestion from our adviser we decided to change.

Also, the article about The Patriot was a satire of last year’s string of scandals within the Republican Party, a factor that was reported in The News article. Unfortunately, The Patriot article in the form that was printed (due to a clerical error on my part) did not convey that and it could have to some people just seemed like we were calling The Patriot gay as an insult (it also contained obscene film titles that were over the line). We did not wish to offend the homosexual community on campus, whose rights and lifestyle we were trying to support through satirizing the hypocritical, “family values”-touting bigots who so often turn out to be homosexuals or pedophiles, or prostitute clients themselves.

I talked to the editor of The Patriot regarding not printing an article about this because he was ready to rail against “PC liberal fascism” on our behalf because of the President Aoun article.

I can’t speak for anyone else who spoke to Moberg, and would suggest that if a student leader wants to talk to an editor about not printing something, maybe he should mention it to both parties involved. Moberg was wrong in his view, because we were not pressured in to anything, and he was about to jump the gun as The News did.

The Patriot article is something I had been worried about from the beginning, and when our advisor expressed the same concerns to me that I had been having in private after the issue had come out, I knew there could be something to my famous neurotic paranoia.

To the best of my knowledge, the current staff will be printing all of these articles in a revised edition, just not in an obscene manner and with the proper message conveyed. It is the TNR’s right to define its image and do everything within our reasonable power to maintain it. We have learned our lesson; we need to be more careful about which files get sent to the pinter and have longer discussion about the messages conveyed in our material.

This whole thing has been blown way out of proportion. We pulled the issue because we at TNR did not want to offend anyone or look like homophobes.

– Sean O’Reilly is a middler communication studies major and former editor of the Times New Roman.