Welcome to HOTPRESSIONS, the newest section of the Pittsburgh Standard. In this section, we take the boldness to rebut articles written in the Pitt News regardless of what section they are from if we feel a rebuttal is necessary. Most of the rebuttals will be personally written by me as time permits.
The general public, students, staff, and faculty are welcome to submit rebuttal responses to any of their articles. Why the Pitt News?
The Pitt News is the student paper reaching thousands of students and non-students. I used to write for them until they changed the opinions section into the perspective section last year and had about only 12-14 columnists write for them weekly. I applied but alas I did not make it.
That is okay because Jeremy Day, the former Editor in Chief of the print edition of the Pittsburgh Standard took me on his staff and I have had the most wonderful opportunity to work with their staff. As the print edition is taking time off, I got the opportunity to run an online edition.
A lot of people I talked to had issues with the Pitt News and the types of articles and stories that were being covered. Naturally, not everyone can agree with particular newspapers.
To give an alternative perspective to the student body, the Pittsburgh Standard was born. Lots of people loved the paper and wanted it to remain. As a monthly paper, we could never compete with the Pitt News that has been active since the 1900’s but we knew we could give alternative stories for students to read.
Now as I am forming a new board as Editor in Chief and articles are appearing online, I decided to have a section called HOTPRESSIONS after Todd Morris’ column appeared in the Pitt News. This gives people the opportunity to write rebuttal columns to Pitt News columns rather than just letters to the editor.
Let me break the words down: HOT, PRESS, ION (S).
HOT – Passionate
PRESS- Journalists
ION- State or condition
It is called HOTPRESSIONS because topics and articles addressed here will be addressed in a passionate way just as journalists try to cover stories regardless of the state or condition they are faced with. There is no limit to the size you want to present as it can be broken down into parts.
In closing, I love many of the staff that write for the Pitt News and have respect for a lot of them that I got to know. Many of them were there for me as I wrote for them. Just as players get cut from one team and go to another team and play against a former team, I feel like I am in that position. Yet, this does not mean there is animosity between that player and his/her former team because they already built friendships there. I have no animosity towards the Pitt News. I just don’t agree with a lot of things that are printed. You may not like what the PS prints here or in other sections but feel free to send letters to the editor or leave your feedback.
As a fairly recent paper, we are focusing more on content than AP style. We hope to have the entire paper run in AP standards in the future.
The goal is to raise the standard for news and views with a new perspective. If you would like to write for this section, please email them to rcrst6@pitt.edu, pghstd@pitt.edu, or pghstndrd@pittsburghstandard.com