My boyfriend goes to K-State (I know, I know, boo on him) and as such, reads the K-State newspaper, the Collegian, regularly. He told me about this article that appeared in Monday, February 4's edition of the paper on page 7. Headline: Pleasures of anal sex outweigh potential health risk.
Basically, the writer, Matt Combes, goes into great detail about the safety issues involved with anal, and then talks about the best methods to act this out. He doesn't hesitate to admit that he is gay, and is a sexual-health educator. He is also very candid in his description of the safest way to go about doing this. My favorite line reads: "...buy a large stock in a lube company because you are going to be using a lot. I suggest brands with numbing agents to help your partner along." So, how is this stepping outside the box for him, or pushing the envelope as a journalist might say? Actually, it would probably be going farther in his envelope.
I was personally shocked that an article like this got put into the Kansas State University newspaper, or any collegiate newspaper for that matter. Manhattan residents are known to be quite conservative, so I don't see this article being very popular among the masses. But beyond that, I don't think this article would be very popular anywhere. Even though one may not be fully knowledgeable about what makes a good news story in college, most people have a general idea, and this is not it. How the editors of this paper thought that a story educating the public about anal sex was a worthy, let alone acceptable, topic is truly beyond me. It seems to me that an article promoting safe sex is still promoting sex, and if I'm not mistaken, most people still think that sex is a private matter, whether or not one is engaging in it.
My big issue with this article is this: why do we need to read about something that most people consider a personal issue in a journalism venue that is supposed to be for "youth" aged 18-24 when most people already know the information that was written anyway and choose rarely to talk and never to write about? Is this really appropriate? Is it "good journalism"?
Hmmm...I think it's kind of hard to say if this article is bad journalism. I do agree that the article is very edgy, maybe inappropriate for a paper. It might have done better in something more like Sex on the Hill, I don't know if they do that at K-State though. I'm assuming this article was printed in the opinion section. So, on the other side of things part of the opinion section of the newspaper is to shock people. We don't want to stifle someone's opinion just because some find it inappropriate. Sometimes the point of an opinion page is to piss readers off. Seeing as the writer is a counselor for the Regional AIDS Project, I think his intentions were more to educate.
It's debatable whether this is good or bad journalism, but I hate the idea of not printing something just because some might find it inappropriate.
I also think that this probably would have been more appropriate in a Sex on the Hill type of publication, but it seems this journalist thought differently. I think the journalist's intention was to educate, and with a "racy" subject as this he chose to do it with humor and a bit of the old shock value. I would think this would be a pretty effective way of educating the masses on this particular subject simply because of Manhattan's more conservative nature. All it takes is a couple of people to read a story like this before the entire campus is searching for a paper.
I definitely agree that this article is on a scandalous topic, but I bet you anything the paper gained a lot more readers with this story. I can see this being inappropriate for a city publication, but the primary readers of this paper are in college and like to be "shocked". The editors will definitely get a lot of guff for this article, I'm sure, but I think the satisfaction of the increased readership will weigh out the cons.
First off, I really appreciate the link to the article. It seemed like the author knew what he was talking about. He gave some simple instructions on how to be as safe as possible when participating in anal sex. And gave some good information on why anal sex is more dangerous than vaginal to begin with.
Before I read the article itself I couldn't really understand how this was good journalism either. But after reading the article I do admit that he did a good job on covering the topic. He expanded the target audience from exclusively homosexual men to also include heterosexual couples.
He did this by sharing with his audience that heterosexual men question him regularly on how to get women to agree to engage in anal sex. He shows us that the topic truly is an issue of interest to many people. He quoted a credible survey that says 34% of men and 30% of women have admitted to trying anal sex at least once in their lives.
I'm not sure if it is good journalism but I do think it was written well. It was not over the top or grossly detailed. I think he did a good job.