In professional sports, a coach determines everything for the good of the team. He or she is essentially the leader of a team, and it is his or her job, and determines its direction.

Rare is it that a popular and successful coach who is doing his or her job is relieved of their duties by those who hold the purse strings. It is similar in journalism - a popular editor who does his or her job is a blessing, not a curse.

So it was more than a surprise when an administrator at USC determined that Zach Fox, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Trojan who had been reelected by the students working for the paper, was worth blocking based on his actions and plans for the future of the paper.

Unfortunately, Fox's only crime was purely being a journalist, identifying a problem, going after it, and trying to change it. After trying to gain access to financial records for the Daily Trojan, Fox had made it a point to create more financial transparency within his newspaper's organization. Another part of his plan was to rearrange the responsibilities of the senior editorial staff, to shift more of the day-to-day responsibilities to managing editors and other editorial staff.

It was for these reasons that Fox was vetoed, harming the integrity of not just the Daily Spartan , but of college journalism in general.

Journalism is all about bringing the truth to the people with no

conditions, be it a college student or the every day person on the street. The situation at USC is an outright assault on journalism itself, sending a poor message to student journalists that administrators can intervene when personnel decisions are made that they do not like. As an editorial presented in several college papers said, "practicing journalism with strings attached isn't really practicing journalism at all."

With recent safeguards that have been added on the state level, the administration of this college will never have a hand in the personnel decisions of the Current . It is not the place of the administration of any college to intervene in bringing the truth to the students.