It’s a sort of sick kismet that on the week I’m slated to write my Editor’s Voice, my once-a-semester opportunity to address our newspaper’s readership directly and on any topic of my choosing, the name Charlie Hebdo is still making headlines. And while I don’t pretend that the work I do for The Peak as humour editor is comparable to what some satirists have made careers out of, I’d like to use the opportunity to talk about a time when print humour affected my life.
More than once during my time as humour editor I’ve faced criticism from some, telling me to take more risks with my writing and target certain people or organizations, but I digress. Humour isn’t something that always has to come at someone else’s expense and I stand by that. I don’t brilliantly lampoon controversial figureheads or use my words to suggest political change; nor do I have a fraction of these humourists’ reach or influence. I write articles about fake Jurassic Park movie scripts and draw weekly comics about agoraphobic superheroes.
When I was editor-in-chief of a different student newspaper last year, we came under scrutiny for publishing a staff writer’s humour article that mentioned a police department by name and linked them to accidental distribution of candy laced with LSD. The piece itself was relatively weak — relying on over-the-top description more than cleverness — but I had approved the piece regardless. (Since humour is wildly subjective, it’s hard to dismiss something simply because you yourself don’t find it funny.)
The week that followed the article’s publishing was one of the most stressful times of my life. It wasn’t until I received an email from the CBC, asking me to comment on the police department calling for a retraction of the article and apology for its publication, that I knew anything was amiss. As it turns out, the police had emailed me prior to this, though it went to my junk folder because sometimes life is awful and hates you like that.
It used to be my mantra to never apologize for something our student newspaper published regardless of its reception.
Up until that point, it had been my mantra to never apologize for something we published regardless of its reception. After all, newspapers are meant to create and curate content, not apologize for it. Unfortunately, this incident came at the same time that we were in the midst of renewing our study levy contract with the school. Someone told me they had contacted the college’s Board of Directors and my thoughts immediately jumped to what the fallout could be: student newspapers, for those who don’t know, survive largely on the income provided with student levies. Without one, I knew the publication wouldn’t be able to survive for long.
We ultimately took the article down and I issued a personal apology to the police department, using the most diplomatic language possible to say how wrong we were to publish it in the first place. My apology was accepted and within a few weeks any scrutiny from the public had fizzled.
While the stakes were probably never as high as they were in my mind, I made the conscious decision that stubbornly defending a subpar article wasn’t worth the bleak possibility of future generations not having the same newspaper I’d known and loved for years. I decided that I’d rather swallow my pride and wave the apology flag than have the newspaper not be there for future Jaceys. I wouldn’t say I regret the choice — our contract was renewed weeks afterwards without any hiccups — but I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had stood by the article and refused to apologize.
Losing sleep for a few weeks pales in comparison to events such as what happened to the employees of Charlie Hebdo on January 7, but what I’m trying to say is that as harmless as writing humour may often seem — some of the editors at The Peak even refer to the section as “jokes” — there’s always the possibility that real-world repercussions can arise from it. Don’t let the fear of backlash hold you back from writing about certain topics, but keep in mind that some people might not necessarily find the humour in your jokes about LSD.
