briefs

(U-WIRE) FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Student leaders, staff and faculty are crying foul after… (U-WIRE) FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Student leaders, staff and faculty are crying foul after Colorado State University President Larry Penley held a closed-door meeting to discuss a potential takeover of the student newspaper by the Fort Collins Coloradoan – a move that could forever change the operation of independent student media at the university.

Bob Moore and Christine Chin, the executive editor and publisher of Gannett-owned newspaper The Coloradoan, attended the meeting in which they proposed a “strategic partnership” with the Rocky Mountain Collegian.

Gannett currently owns and operates two college newspapers at Florida State University and the University of Central Florida.

Neither Student Media professional nor student staff was privy to the meeting. Katie Gleeson, president of the Associated Students of CSU, said the meeting was planned weeks in advance and, according to a release from Penley, had been proposed late last year.

Collegian staff became aware of the secret meeting an hour prior through an anonymous tip.

When J. David McSwane, Collegian editor-in-chief, questioned University spokesman Brad Bohlander about his exclusion, Bohlander said Gleeson served as an appropriate student representative, and that the meeting had been nothing more than an introductory chat.

“It’s entirely preliminary,” he said. “There’s no news work, no information, no decisions, no recommendations, no thoughts of where they might go. We just wanted to hear what they had to say.”

But one faculty e-mail alludes to more than a preliminary discussion.

Greg Luft, chair of the Department of Journalism and Technical Communication, sent an e-mail to his department about his discussion with Moore, which detailed “taking over management of the Collegian and taking it private, as a for-profit entity, while allowing students to direct the publication.”

Bohlander said that the university’s concern regarded the students involved and what possible benefits would become available in a strategic partnership.

“Obviously our concern is what’s best for the students: Could they come in and provide student scholarships? Could they come in and provide a direct, clear pathway to the nation’s largest newspaper corporation?” Bohlander said.

But McSwane said a Gannett-controlled student media would be anything but and that his exclusion from the meeting was suspect.

“They knew what I was going to say: That the Collegian has been here for 117 years, and it’d be a disgrace to be sold to a media giant,” McSwane said. “(Penley) has screwed up by not letting students and staff take part in this discussion.” – Erik Myers, Rocky Mountain Collegian (Colorado State U.)

(MCT) COLUMBIA, S.C. – Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary on Saturday, defeating his Democratic rivals and emerging with a win that puts him at rough parity with Hillary Clinton as they barrel toward the Super Tuesday primaries.

Drawing heavily on support from African-Americans, Obama led Clinton by several points in a primary powered by one of the most significant shows of voter turnout in recent history in the Palmetto State.

The win sends Obama into the next phase of the campaign with renewed momentum after losing to Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada in successive weeks.

At least half the people who showed up at the polls on Saturday were expected to be black voters, a core constituency for the most competitive black candidate ever to seek either party’s nomination for president.

Black voters reversed what had been a clear preference for Clinton before Obama’s victory in Iowa. – Christi Parsons and Lisa Anderson, Chicago Tribune

(MCT) Vehement protest has greeted the decision by Stanford University to invite the controversial president of Spain’s Basque regional government to speak on campus.

Juan Jose Ibarretxe is author of a hotly debated proposal for a referendum on independence for the mountainous region of northern Spain.

While resistance to a Feb. 14 seminar with Ibarretxe started on campus, much of the mounting pressure comes from the other side of the world.

A globally circulated online petition with more than 3,500 signatures holds names of people far outside the Stanford community, including a European Parliament member and the sister of a Sevilla official assassinated by ETA, a Basque terrorist group.

Even Spain’s regional government of Navarra has weighed in, sending a letter of protest to Stanford President John Hennessy.

In Stanford’s tiny Spanish community, there is no consensus on the visit, said Manuel Franco Sevilla, president of Iberia, the Spanish students association at Stanford.

Nor does the average student hold a strong opinion.

“I don’t think the general population of students at Stanford are really aware of this visit,” said Sevilla.

The international protesters say that Ibarretxe does not deserve a platform at Stanford, because he calls for a referendum on Basque independence from Spain and France.

His visit – coming on the eve of Spanish elections – is politically motivated, they say. They criticize the professor who invited Ibarretxe, saying he shares the president’s ideologies. – Lisa M. Krieger, San Jose Mercury News

(MCT) DAVOS, Switzerland – The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum moved toward a close Saturday, with powerful policy makers calling for global efforts to prevent a U.S. slowdown from turning into a worldwide catastrophe.

In a speech, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda warned of an increased risk of a global economic downturn.

“There is no need to take an excessively pessimistic view of the current situation, but at the same time we do need to have a sense of urgency as we engage in coordinated actions while each country also implements necessary domestic response measures,” Fukuda said.

John Thain, the man recently tapped to run Merrill Lynch in the wake of devastating subprime hits, painted a pessimistic picture for the U.S. economy and the mortgage market.

“I unfortunately think there is more downside in the mortgage and mortgage-related market,” Thain said.

Those problems are likely to continue to spread around the globe to other financial institutions that hold mortgage-related securities, he said.

On top of that, pressure on U.S. consumers could translate into problems in other credit markets, including credit-card debt.

On the plus side, Thain said the ability of troubled banks forced to write down billions of dollars in subprime-related holdings to recapitalize themselves by attracting foreign money is a “good sign” that the world hasn’t lost confidence in the United States. – William L. Watts, MarketWatch

(MCT) SACRAMENTO, Calif. – In a blow to medical marijuana supporters, the California Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that employers can fire workers who test positive for the drug used under a physician’s recommendation.

By a 5-2 vote, the High Court ruled that the state’s California’s Compassionate Use Act of 1996 does not extend rights to medical marijuana users in the workforce, abnegating claims that the state’s Fair Employment and Housing Act ought to protect this class of employees as the drug remains illegal under federal law.

“Nothing in the text or history of the Compassionate Use Act suggests the voters intended the measure to address the respective rights and duties of employers and employees,” Associate Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote in the majority opinion. “Under California law, an employer may require pre-employment drug tests and take illegal drug use into consideration in making employment decisions.”

The case before the court centered on a discrimination claim by Gary Ross over his 2001 firing from Sacramento telecommunications firm RagingWire.

Ross, 45, has been under a physician’s recommendation to use marijuana to treat a longtime back injury he had sustained while in the Air Force. Court documents stated that Ross had notified RagingWire earlier about his medical marijuana use but ultimately lost his job as a lead systems administrator after his drug test came back positive. – Crystal Carreon, McClatchy Newspapers