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Fighting for the values of honesty, fairness and the free pursuit of truth
in journalism, at North Central University and beyond

North Central president asks to preread article on himself

Student writer said she gave the president her rough draft after he personally requested it

President Gordon Anderson last week asked Northern Light staff writer Raelyn Frink to give him the rough draft of an article for which he was a primary source, nlnews.org was informed Sunday. Release of the information was delayed until it could be positively confirmed.

Frink told interim editor-in-chief Jodi Krause that Anderson had asked her to send him the "unedited copy" of an article she wrote about a recent trip Anderson made to a sister school of North Central in China.

It was the same article that the interim Northern Light staff was instructed to place as the top story on the front page in a meeting Tuesday, April 11. At the meeting, Anderson assisted three other school officials in directing the interim staff on how to lay out the front page of the upcoming April 25 issue.

The article describes a trip Anderson made in February to Chuxiong Normal University in Chuxiong, China. The trip was highlighted by a signing ceremony attended by Anderson and Chuxiong school officials that officially designated the Chuxiong school as a sister school of North Central.

An earlier draft of the article stated that "Anderson has a lot of pictures of the signing ceremony between the two schools, and he wants to describe to the students what the relationship will mean."

Anderson's direction at Tuesday's meeting to place the article as the top story was consistent with administration's stated goal to edit the student newspaper prior to publication so that nothing that "sheds North Central in a negative light" is included.

Late last week, however, he took the censorship a step further by personally asking Frink, a first-semester staff writer, to send him a copy of the article prior even to her editor reading it.

Read former news editor Chuck Bahr's editorial on Anderson's request to personally preread Frink's article.

Note: Staff writer Raelyn Frink did not contribute to this article.