It’s not difficult in this business to tell when something strikes a nerve with readers, good or bad. For instance, if the newspaper you work for comes out, say, Tuesday morning, and you get to the office around 10 a.m. and already have a voicemail and a few emails, something’s up.
Such was the case last week when we ran a mock list of reasons NHTI earned the crown as No. 1 value-added school in the country from the Brookings Institution.
We received a handful of responses from readers who we had offended with the content, which was the last thing we ever hoped to do. We love NHTI and have tremendous respect for its faculty and staff and current and former students.
So we owe the entire NHTI community a big-time Insider apology.
The list was entirely satirical and not based in reality (though who wouldn’t want to go to a school where Chuck Norris was in charge? Dude gets stuff done), but we should have done a much better job of wording the introduction. Instead of going so heavy on sarcasm, saying we’d highlight the reasons NHTI received the recognition, we should have said something like “here’s a list of things we believe would add value to any college education.”
The jokes we made were intended to reflect our sarcastic take on college students in general, anywhere, not specifically students at NHTI. Of course, our wording made that pretty difficult to understand unless you’re a mind reader – in which case we’d love to do a story on you.
NHTI was nothing but gracious and understanding about the situation, and our readers were right for calling us out. The intent was to be playful, not hurtful, but we missed the mark for sure. We’re sincerely sorry for offending anyone – it won’t happen again!
