“Shades of the Streisand effect in play.”
That is what Darcy Hoogers, MacEwan student and contributor with the Griff, said in our Discord server on the evening of Oct. 14. President Trimbee had just sent an email to all MacEwan students criticizing Maclean’s for including MacEwan University in its annual university rankings list.
The average MacEwan student wasn’t signing up for Maclean’s newsletters before the president’s email. I’d like to see a comparison in viewership on that website before and after the email.
When I initially saw the email titled “Do Not Reply — From the President: Maclean’s Rankings” in my inbox, I ignored it. I thought it would be some kind of senseless gloating based on yet another magazine that nobody reads. Who the hell cares about magazines these days?
Only after the swarm of forum posts on MacEwan Student Life and messages in the Griff Discord server did I decide to read over this email.
President Trimbee made the claim that “Maclean’s uses a methodology that includes measures such as grant funding from only some sources, specific kinds of research and creative output, and expenditures on only a sample of the things through which universities invest in their libraries.”
I learned about faulty methodologies in DESN380, despite our low ranking in the research category. I agree. MacEwan isn’t a research university, and I think everyone knows that. I’m here for practice-based learning; I’ve got a portfolio to publish, and I don’t really need any of my research published.
“We will continue to focus on Teaching Greatness, and not on faulty, inaccurate rankings designed to sell magazines,” she ends with in the email.
Seems like the university doesn’t care about magazines either. I mean, who cares what Maclean’s says?
MacEwan is one of the only universities in Canada that offers a digital experience design major in the bachelor of design program. If that doesn’t interest design students, they can instead learn the archaic methods of designing magazine layouts. They can learn from photography instructors like Adam Goudreau and Curtis Trent, who have helped develop Edify’s photography style, one of Edmonton’s last surviving magazines. Design students can even apply these outdated skills to create monthly issues of the Griff with other student journalists.
MacEwan also holds one of the only journalism majors in Alberta. One student from that program even wrote the same list for Maclean’s back in 2018, and he now heads the Griff as editor-in-chief. Journalism students can engage in practice-based learning, or ‘teaching greatness’, by working with the Griff and various other projects and internships through the university.
Some of the latest MacEwan journalism graduates are now published in the Globe and Mail, CBC, the Edmonton Journal, the Toronto Star and even Town and Country Today. But who even reads those rags?
Keep an eye out for Maclean’s’ latest issue. It might collect dust with the other unread magazines near the equipment centre in Allard Hall. Or in the John L. Haar Library. Or, don’t bother, because who the hell even reads magazines?
Sincerely, your student publication.
