Education, Ethics, and Entertainment: Creating In The Loop’s Policy Manuel
Caleb McGever
Bio: Hello! My name is Caleb McGever and I am from Phoenix, Arizona. (Although now I live here in Spokane!) My majors are in English and Theology—which means I get to read a lot. The three most impactful activities I’ve been a part of as a student were reporting with The Whitworthian, co-founding the Sceptics Club, and playing electric guitar in the jazz program. I’ve had the honor to present papers about English, theology, and philosophy in three different states—who knew academics would lead to so much travel? I’ve also been awarded the 2024 theology department writing award for a paper I wrote about Kierkegaard’s depiction of faithful community in Fear and Trembling.
Majors: English, Theology
Even though my full time career is still uncertain, I know that I’ll be around in Spokane. I currently do freelance journalism work with FāVS and The Fig Tree and would love to continue doing journalistic work about the community. On a standard day you might find me in a bookstore or coffee shop on Garland Street or downtown, if you recognize me come say hi!
Overview: A good magazine thrives off of good writing, good design, good photos, and good direction. However, in addition to the talent required to pull off these difficult qualifiers, a good magazine requires consistent policy to ensure the quality and consistency of its work. Additionally, written policy is important for providing transparency, which is a vital element of journalistic writing.
As the first magazine editor of The Whitworthian’s new magazine, In the Loop, I took the responsibility of creating new policy based off of extensive research into other magazine and newspaper policies and a reflection on the values of Whitworthian’s student journalism focus. For my honors project, I created a written policy for In the Loop, which establishes rules for important topics like AI usage, submission guidelines, and conflict-of-interest boundaries. Each section of the policy relates back to a mission statement, which identifies In the Loop’s two important values: 1) Educating students to portray their community through magazine writing and 2) producing journalistic-quality stories about the Whitworth community.
Alongside the policy, I wrote a paper expanding on the research supporting each decisions. The paper compares ethics handbooks of outlets like AP and NPR and values statements from outlets like The Atlantic or Fox News. I found that outlets with the most developed policy manuals related each rule to a statement of values, which is the main feature I adapted into In the Loop’s policy manual.
