Keep your pants on

Why the masterdebate column is beneficial

Michael Silicz, Staff

If you’re reading this, then you are lucky. In fact, I’d go so far to say that you’re very lucky.

To begin, you’re lucky enough to be enrolled in university. That means you’re earning an education that will help you grow intellectually as a person, inform you civically as a citizen, and further you economically as a future graduate. By attending the University of Manitoba, you’re on the right track to a more prosperous and fulfilling life.

But you are also lucky for another reason. You’re lucky because this is likely the first, and unfortunately, likely the last time you will be able to contribute your own opinions, views and theories to civil society. Unless you become a politician, business leader or a writer, then it’s likely that you will never have an opportunity like this again to contribute your opinions to a large audience. So this is it — this is your shot — to make a difference and get your opinions known and read.

Best of all, because of the masterdebate column, readers of the Manitoban will never be caught with their pants down when it comes to knowing both sides of the issue.

And how better to do that then write for the Manitoban? As a paper, we turn very little down, and so long as you have a desire to get published, we will help you out, no matter what you want to write about. Whether you write at the level of Charles Dickens or are still around the level of Dr. Seuss, our staff will dedicate the necessary time to help write your article and get your name in the paper. A paper, I remind you, that has a weekly readership of about 20,000 people. What better way to get you name out there, not to mention onto the world wide web?

This leads me to this week’s appropriate debate: is this very column useful? Well, not only is it useful, but I strongly believe that it is innovative, dynamic and a model of information exchange that should embarrass other newspapers across this great country of ours.

The masterdebate column was created for two principled reasons. First, it was designed on a superficial level to encourage student participation. It was hoped that a writer, wanting to argue one side of an issue, could be paired off against another with the opposite view.

But on a more fundamental level, the masterdebate was created to foster change. The masterdebate was envisioned to further democratic discourse. It was designed, tongue-in-cheek, to mock other newspapers that either failed to inform their readership of both sides of a story, or were too afraid to give readers the chance to decide an issue for themselves.

Go open up the comment section of the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Winnipeg Free Press or even the Winnipeg Sun, and you will understand. After 10 or so pages of news, the comment section of a newspaper is meant to give readers an interpretation of that news. Yet a major problem always remains — the interpretation is inevitably one-sided.

Go ahead and look. How many times do you read editorials that present opposite opinions of one another? Each and every day, the big daily newspapers publish editorials and analyses that further their own editorial slant and bias. They never present both sides of the story.

The masterdebate changes this. It presents two sides of the same story and lets the reader decide. And so far, it has been a success. Sure, every now and then we settle the less important matters in life, but the column’s created some interesting debates and letter to the editor responses. Some of the most contentious topics — Starbucks coffee in Dafoe, recognizing Kosovo, to stay or leave Afghanistan, and whether or not a university degree is helpful — have created meaningful democratic debate and increased campus awareness. The effect would not have been the same had only one side of the issue been published.

Thus, the masterdebate is a beneficial column, increasing both the allure of the Manitoban, and helping inform students everywhere of both sides of the issue. Best of all, because of the masterdebate column, readers of the Manitoban will never be caught with their pants down when it comes to knowing both sides of any given issue. What’s even to debate in a win-win situation like that?

Michael Silicz wants YOU to write for the Manitoban. He also wants to remind everyone that only YOU can prevent forest fires.