Five finalists for the renaming of Whitman College’s student newspaper are getting lambasted on the newspaper’s Facebook site, which announced the names Wednesday.
After a year of discussion about changing the name of The Pioneer, in February staff of the student-run newspaper announced they would choose a new name that would “better represent the diverse, tolerant” community the newspaper serves. The Pioneer name, staff said in an editorial, connoted historic oppression against Native Americans by white settlers.
Newspaper staff also asked for suggestions on a new name.
The five finalists posted on the newspaper’s Facebook site late Wednesday are:
The Messenger
The Wire
Clocktower News
Whitman Weekly
The Outlook
Comments have trickled in since then, though the low numbers could be due to few students attending Whitman in the summer.
As of 9 a.m. today, 15 users had left 16 comments, mostly in opposition to the titles.
“The Pioneer had a nice ring to it,” wrote one commenter.
The second supporter merely stated “The Pioneer.”
As for the critics, “terrible and bland” is how one commenter described the choices.
Another derided each name: “The Messenger is a failed Microsoft version of AOL’s AIM. The Wire is a TV show about Baltimore crime. Clocktower News is too much like the Jehovah Witness publication, ‘The Watchtower.’ Whitman Weekly is dull and unoriginal. And the Outlook? Like Microsoft’s email service?”
As for how The Pioneer staff picked the five finalists, staff said on Facebook the names were solicited “from all of you” at the end of the 2016 school year, and those “ideas” were combined with names generated from internal discussions with the newspaper’s editorial board.
“We now have a wonderful opportunity to create a name and brand for the student paper that will last as long as there are students at Whitman College,” the statement opened.
“The Pioneer” Publisher Marra Clay said in an interview on Friday since announcing the name change, the editorial board has reviewed 73 suggestions, as well as conducted four name surveys of students and other Whitman community members.
She added staff and other editorial members, through consensus, chose the five finalists, and that three primary criteria were used in narrowing the names: choosing names that best represent students at Whitman, allowing for creativity but still having a name that will be taken serious and picking a name that would withstand the test of time.
Some of the names, Clay said, were clever but just didn’t meet all criteria, like the suggestion of The Grapevine.
“It is kind of cute and catchy and connects us to wineries of Walla Walla County,” Clay said. “And in the end we decided to not add that to the list because it would (make the newspaper) appear to be more of a gossip column because of the saying ‘we heard it through the grapevine.'”
Other names, Clay said, were obviously meant as jokes or wouldn’t work for other reasons.
“‘The Onion’ was suggested about 20 times,” Clay say, “which doesn’t quite work when there is already a newspaper with that name.”
The current five finalists are now being listed in an online survey for input from the community.
Clay said they have already had 500 responses and that a decision on the new name could be made by staff as early as this August.
College officials said they have nothing to do with the name change at the student-run newspaper. But they, too, are in the midst of a name change.
In April, college officials announced the school mascot – the Missionary, a name associated with the man after whom Whitman College is named – is being dropped
Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa, settled in the area in the mid-1800s with the goal of evangelizing and converting the Native Americans to Christianity.
College officials said after a campus survey that 78 percent of staff, faculty and students who responded thought Missionary was an inappropriate mascot for Whitman today.
College officials added a working group of faculty, staff, students and alumni would be created to compile a list of prospective official mascots, and the entire college community will vote on the new name in the fall of 2016.
