By KYLE ODEGARD | Posted: Saturday, April 19, 2008 12:00 am
Gazette-Times reporter
The great majority of the 7,000 copies of The Daily Barometer published Friday were stolen and trashed, said Lauren Dillard, editor in chief of Oregon State University's student-run newspaper.
"Stacks of newspapers were found in garbage cans" and had coffee or some other substance dumped over them, Dillard added.
"It's frustrating because it's censorship in a weird way," she said.
The top story in Friday's edition of the paper was about six students arrested in an alleged drug trafficking ring.
On Thursday, three of the suspects visited the Barometer office and asked that their names not be published, Dillard said. "I told them there was no way we could print the story without their names," she said.
The suspects left the Barometer seeming on decent terms with the student-run newspaper.
The papers were stolen from six outdoor kiosks on campus. Most papers delivered to indoor locations survived, however.
The loss value regarding the destroyed papers likely was at least near $1,000, not including any potential adverse reaction from advertisers upset that few readers saw their ads.
An eight-page paper costs about $1,100 to print, Dillard said, and Friday's issue was 12 pages.
"We're working on a tight budget as it is," Dillard said.
Kyle Odegard covers Oregon State University. He can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.