INVESTIGATIVE: Reporting on Office of Student Media job search controversy
- Savannah Bullard
- Nov 1, 2019
- 22 min read
I was a member of a four-person reporting team that worked to cover a botched job search for a new director of the UA Office of Student Media. Here are the four stories we published. Read the original stories here, here, here and here.
Story 1: Ethical concerns surround candidate for Student Media director position
A question of ethics surrounds a candidate for the Office of Student Media director position after allegations surfaced that he censored an unfolding story about sexual assault on his former newspaper’s staff.
Bob Davis, former editor and publisher at The Anniston Star, is one of three candidates who are being considered for the position at The University of Alabama. The OSM Director oversees six student media outlets: The Crimson White, Alice Magazine, 90.7 The Capstone, Marr’s Field Journal, The Black Warrior Review and Bama Life newsletter.
The concerns surrounding Davis’ potential hiring were brought to The Crimson White’s attention on Wednesday, July 17 by former Anniston Star reporter Eddie Burkhalter, who worked with Davis at the newspaper (often referred to as “The Star”) for nine years.
In November 2017, Burkhalter discovered allegations that H. Brandt Ayers, The Star’s chairman of the Board of Consolidated Publishing and former publisher, “spanked” multiple female reporters in the mid-1970s. Some of the incidents occurred in the Anniston Star workplace, often using a pica stick. Other accusations included Ayers going to one woman’s home and striking her there.
Burkhalter first learned of an allegation of sexual assault against Ayers by reading a column written by Alabama Political Reporter columnist Joey Kennedy. In the column, Joey Kennedy described how his wife Veronica Kennedy was forcibly spanked by Ayers, but went on to write that she did not report the incident because she was afraid her father would kill Ayers and then be sent to prison.
After questioning former newsroom employees at The Anniston Star, Burkhalter said they were surprised he had not heard of Ayers’ reputation for spanking women. Burkhalter began talking to sources and developing a story on the allegations. Burkhalter said that he was then “ordered” by Ben Cunningham, then-managing editor at The Anniston Star, that he was not to contact any victims or sources and to quit pursuing the story.
Cunningham initially seemed receptive to working on the story, Burkhalter said, but that he needed to check with Davis first. After returning to the office, Burkhalter said he was told to stop working on the story.
“So I went out to do my daily (rounds) and when I came back about an hour and a half later, I came into [Cunningham’s] office and he had this look on his face and I knew it wasn’t good,” Burkhalter said. “So I said, ‘What happened?’ And Ben’s like, ‘It didn’t go well.’ [Cunningham] ordered me, he said, ‘I’m going to order you: You cannot contact anybody about this story. You’re not to contact the victims, you cannot tell anybody else in the newsroom, you’re not to tell anybody about this or actively work on this.’”
In a column published by The Anniston Star on Jan. 2, 2018, Cunningham gave his account of his conversations with Burkhalter and Davis:
“I agreed with Eddie that we should look into it, and that The Star should publish the story if it checked out. I felt certain that The Star’s editor and publisher, Bob Davis, would agree, and filled him in at the first opportunity later that morning. Eddie had left the newsroom to report a story at the YMCA downtown. I was surprised at Bob’s initial reaction: an instruction to halt work on the story, but felt that in time he’d come to the decision I felt was right: to at least check the allegations out. I’d worked with Bob long enough to have a sense of his journalistic ethics and general character, and been proud to work for him. I believed that he’d agree with me, sooner rather than later. I asked if he was open to future arguments to resume work on the story, and he said he was.”
However, Burkhalter pursued the story and reached out to alleged victims, including Veronica Kennedy, who previously worked as a reporter at The Anniston Star and was the only victim willing to go on record to talk about the assault.
During the course of his investigation, Burkhalter found court documents that contained mentions of spanking instances involving Ayers.
View the court documents here:
Burkhalter said he later met with Davis and Cunningham and was reprimanded for pursuing the story. Burkhalter said he asked Davis if he would be allowed to pursue the story, but Davis would not respond with a yes or no.
Joey Kennedy, a former Anniston Star employee, said there was no question that Davis and Cunningham were trying to keep the story from going public.
“Bob Davis just acted unethically as a newspaper person and he acted to cover his boss instead of pursuing a story,” Joey Kennedy said. “When I was at The Star, that just wasn’t The Star’s history.”
Burkhalter decided to leave The Anniston Star after he was censored and published the story with Alabama Political Reporter, which detailed a host of allegations – corroborated by court proceedings and other interviews – against Ayers that extended beyond the newsroom.
Ayers stepped down as chairman of Consolidated Publishing on Jan. 4, 2018, three days after the story about the sexual assault allegations were published. Ayers issued a statement on the allegations, saying he regretted his actions.
“As a very young man with more authority than judgment, I did some things I regret,” Ayers said in the statement. “At my advanced age I wish I could relive those days again, knowing the seriousness of my position and with the accumulated judgment that goes with age.”
Davis wrote a column for The Anniston Star on Jan. 2, 2018, the day after the original story on the allegations was published. In it, Davis said, “Over my 14 years with this company, I’d never heard such allegations.”
In his column, Davis gave his side of the encounter with Burkhalter:
“On Nov. 17, I directed Cunningham to tell Burkhalter to suspend work on the story for a few days until we had a chance to sit down and discuss it the following week. Cunningham did that, and Burkhalter agreed to wait. But Burkhalter revealed the next week that he’d continued reporting anyway, despite agreeing not to do so and against the direction of his supervisors. We hadn’t yet had a chance to review how we would go about treating sources who wished to remain anonymous and inquiring into events alleged to have happened more than 40 years ago. During a meeting, I asked Burkhalter to acknowledge that he had not followed Cunningham’s direction. In the course of that meeting, Burkhalter resigned. My point still held: We hadn’t made a decision to publish a story, and we hadn’t made a decision to not publish a story. We can’t do that until we’ve assembled all the relevant facts.”
Veronica Kennedy, however, told The Crimson White that she does not believe Davis was unaware of the allegations before Burkhalter began investigating them.
“I know with his columns that he wrote, he said he had never heard of these allegations,” Veronica Kennedy said. “I know that’s a lie because if he had been there for 14 years, he knew. He’d heard them.”
Davis resigned from The Anniston Star in May of 2018.
When The Crimson White reached out to Davis on July 17, 2019 about the allegations brought forth by Burkhalter, he said Burkhalter’s account of the events is “a complete misrepresentation of the truth” and that The Anniston Star published multiple stories about the allegations against Ayers.
“I would suggest to you that Mr. Burkhalter is a disgruntled employee who tried to make the story about himself, not about real suffering of people, which is the story that The Anniston Star pursued,” Davis said.
One confirmed member on the hiring committee for the OSM Director position said they were unaware of Davis’ involvement in censoring any reporting about sexual assault at The Star, but had they known, their opinion on his candidacy would have been less favorable. Two confirmed members declined to comment on whether Davis was questioned on the allegations during the interview process. Those same two members also declined to comment on whether Davis had officially been offered the position, which has yet to be announced.
Adam Sterritt, the assistant vice president of the Division of Student Life, has the final say on who is hired for the OSM Director position. He was not available for comment by the time of publication.
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Editor’s Note 1: In order to prevent a conflict of interest, Mark Mayfield and Julie Salter, two employees of the Office of Student Media who are also candidates for the OSM Director position, were not privy to the gathering, interviewing, reporting or publishing of this story.
Editor’s Note 2: Jessa Reid Bolling, the primary author of this story, works remotely as a reporting intern at Alabama Political Reporter, the same publication for which Eddie Burkhalter works. Burkhalter started his job at APR about three weeks ago, and the two first met the night of this reporting.
Editor’s Note 3: The Crimson White’s Editor-in-Chief Savannah Bullard, Managing Editor Ben Stansell, Opinions Editor Brett Hodges and News Editor Rebecca Griesbach contributed to the reporting of this story.
Story 2: UA alumni react to OSM controversy
UPDATE, July 22, 2019 at 12:24 p.m.: Adam Sterritt, Assistant Vice President of the Division of Student Life, declined to comment when asked if the position of OSM director had been filled, when an announcement would be made on the position or if any ethical concerns about Bob Davis were brought to his attention during any point in the interviewing process.
Sterritt makes the final hiring decision for the OSM Director position.
The story continues for Bob Davis, and new characters have entered the scene.
Former UA students are expressing their concern about a candidate for the Office of Student Media director position after allegations surfaced that he censored an unfolding story about sexual assault on his former newspaper’s staff. And, in an effort of clarification, an employee from The Anniston Star has also come forward to further iron out the narrative surrounding allegations of Davis’ involvement in covering up a story about sexual assault in 2017.
Davis, former editor and publisher at The Anniston Star, is one of three candidates who are being considered for the position at The University of Alabama. The OSM Director oversees six student media outlets: The Crimson White, Alice Magazine, 90.7 The Capstone, Marr’s Field Journal, The Black Warrior Review and Bama Life newsletter.
CONTINUING THE NARRATIVE AT THE STAR
The concerns surrounding Davis’ potential hiring were brought to The Crimson White’s attention on Wednesday, July 17 by former Anniston Star reporter Eddie Burkhalter, who worked with Davis at the newspaper (often referred to as “The Star”) for nine years.
When Davis was reached for comment about Burkhalter’s allegations, he responded by saying that “Mr. Burkalter is a disgruntled employee who tried to make the story about himself, not about real suffering of people, which is the story that The Anniston Star pursued.”
Ben Cunningham, the managing editor of The Star, approached The Crimson White after Thursday’s story on the allegations against Davis was published. Cunningham, who still works as the managing editor at The Star, said in 2017 that Burkhalter approached him on a Friday to ask about pursuing the story.
After Davis told him to order Burkhalter to halt work on the story, Cunningham said he told Burkhalter to wait until the following Friday to pursue the story, not to drop it completely. When Burkhalter refused to wait that long, Cunningham said he negotiated that Burkhalter will wait until the following Wednesday.
Cunningham said Davis’ instruction to halt the story was surprising and that he asked Burkhalter to temporarily stop working on the story to give him time to persuade Davis to allow the story to continue.
“After I asked Bob and was surprised with Bob’s instruction to stop, I told Eddie this as soon as I could,” Cunningham said. “When he had first brought me this tip that morning, even then he was saying he was prepared to leave the paper, if he had to, to report the story. I told him I didn’t think that would be necessary and that I had to come back to him with Bob’s instruction, which did surprise and disappoint me.”
Cunningham said Burkhalter “tacitly” agreed to wait until Wednesday but that on Tuesday, Burkhalter admitted he continued to work on the story, going directly against Cunningham’s instruction to wait until he could convince Davis to allow Burkhalter to continue pursuing the story.
Cunningham said that had Burkhalter waited until Wednesday as asked, he would have been able to pursue the story without quitting the Star.
“On Wednesday, after Eddie had quit, Bob agreed at my urging to let us pursue the story and (Tim) Lockette did it instead,” Cunningham said. “Eddie could have done that story at The Anniston Star and chose not to. He chose not to give me the time I asked for.”
Burkhalter said that he did agree to wait until Wednesday to look into the story but that he continued to find more information related to the story. After finding court documents directly related to the allegations, Burkhalter returned to the newsroom on Tuesday to present his findings to Cunningham, in the hopes that new information on the allegations would get Cunningham to put more pressure on Davis to allow the story to continue.
“By that Tuesday morning, I let Ben know what I’d learned because I felt like I’d learned enough to say, ‘Ben, this is how bad it is,’” Burkhalter said. “Instead of saying what I’d hoped he would say, like, ‘Well, I really need to pressure Bob now that we know more and there’s a court case,’ instead of doing that, Ben just got angry at me and that was the end of it. I was hoping that what I had learned would change Ben’s mind and put more pressure on Bob to do the right thing but it didn’t work out that way.”
After Burkhalter was later reprimanded by Cunningham and Davis for not waiting until Wednesday for permission to pursue the story, he decided to leave the Star to pursue the story elsewhere.
“When I eventually got back in the office with Bob and Ben both, Ben kept saying, ‘You promised me Wednesday,’ and I said, ‘Ben, it’s tomorrow. What difference does it make whether it’s today or tomorrow? If you’re not ready to tell me that you’re going to let us look into the story today, you’re not going to be ready tomorrow,’” Burkhalter said.
ALUMNI SPEAK OUT
Monde Donaldson, Vice President of the Better Business Bureau Educational Foundation, worked as the editor-in-chief of The Crimson White from 1974 to 1975. In her professional career, Donaldson has worked to keep an ongoing relationship with the University through her support of The Crimson White, donating to the University and being a part of the major student life alumni awards in recent years. After hearing of the allegations against Davis, she contacted a trustee at the University to express her disapproval.
“The reputation of The Crimson White over the last 10 years has established itself as such a national leader on the student journalism front, and actually on the state front, with the stories that [The Crimson White] have brought forward and I would really, really hate it [for the CW] to take a step back because [the CW] had the wrong leader,” Donaldson said.
Much of Donaldson’s distaste for Davis’ consideration comes from a place of trust, as she served as a journalist for the beginning of her post-collegiate career at The Star and the Mobile Press-Register. Given claims that Davis ordered Burkhalter to halt reporting on the story about former Consolidated Publishing chairman H. Brandt Ayers’ history of sexual assault at The Star, Donaldson worries how Davis might handle potentially controversial stories if he were to be the Director of Student Media.
“If a journalist is doing their job, they’re not there to win a popularity contest,” Donaldson said. “They’re there to seek the truth. And I really question, with Mr. Davis’ background, if he is really willing to back up your staff and seek the truth in every story.”
Laura Testino was a culture reporter for The Crimson White from 2013 to 2016. Shortly after Testino joined the staff as a freshman, the paper published “The Final Barrier,” an article written by Abbey Crain and Matt Ford on segregation within the University’s Greek system. Testino said seeing the work that went into that piece inspired her to rethink the way she viewed journalism.
“This showed me what student media could do and that piece would not have happened without the support from the rest of the OSM,” Testino said. “They (Crain and Ford) had the support of the newsroom and coming into that as a new student and watching that they had that support, it made me feel like I would be able to tell a story like that if I wanted to one day.”
After graduating from the University, Testino spent 10 months writing about changes in law and policy that occurred after Buzzfeed News told the story of Megan Rondini, a former UA student and alleged survivor of sexual assault whose suicide, a lawmaker contended, was a result of the systems that failed her.
Testino said that in the era of the #MeToo movement, the public is not only seeing more survivors who have been silenced from telling their stories, but they’re also becoming more aware of the institutional practices that keep them silent – including those in the newsroom.
“It often comes down to an editor for whatever reason saying, ‘We can’t run this story’ and I think that it’s important to realize, any time you’re talking about sexual assault, the story is obviously very important and for that reason, you want to be able to trust your editor with that,” Testino said. “You want it to be a very collaborative effort where somebody has your back and you’re checking each other as you’re going through the reporting of a story.”
Will Tucker, an investigative reporter for the Southern Poverty Law Center, served as editor-in-chief of The Crimson White from 2012 to 2013.
An event that shaped Tucker’s experience at the paper was the April 27, 2011 EF4 tornado that tore through Tuscaloosa, leaving 51 Tuscaloosa residents dead. Tucker said the staff did reporting they were proud of and that they couldn’t have done it without the directors of student media.
“During those few weeks after the tornado, we were, at times, pretty critical of the University administration’s response and we didn’t really hold back,” Tucker said. “There was no topic that we wouldn’t investigate and write about, either in reporting pieces or in opinion pieces as well, and the directors of student media just supported us wholeheartedly throughout that.”
Tucker believes that the hiring committee should take what has been publicly reported about Davis into consideration when deciding if he is the appropriate candidate for the position.
“They (the hiring committee) should especially consider things that are relevant to reporters being able to do their jobs,” Tucker said.
Ayers and Davis started, with Ayers’ funding, an ongoing partnership between The Anniston Star and the University of Alabama’s community journalism masters program in 2004, just after Davis joined the staff as an editorial page editor in 2003. Davis also served as president of the Ayers Family Institute for Community Journalism from 2010 to 2018. And, Ayers has spoken at University commencement ceremonies and has had scholarships named after him.
In 2018, when the news officially broke of allegations against Ayers’ abusive behavior, Donaldson said she and other UA alumni were quick to demand his name be taken off all honoraries – and the University responded. Given the history of Davis’ and Ayers’ connection to the University, and of Ayers’ abuse at The Star, Donaldson said she expects more clarity about the hiring process for the new director of student media.
“The University needs to be very transparent in this whole situation,” Donaldson said. “I keep asking myself, ‘Why would the University want to hire someone who did not want to report on sexual misconduct in the workplace? Would I want my daughter to be involved with student media at UA if the director chooses to look the other way?’”
LOOKING AHEAD
The Crimson White filed several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the University on July 19, one of which requesting any emails between UA employees and Adam Sterritt, the Assistant Vice President of the Division of Student Life. Sterritt makes the final hiring decision for the OSM Director position. Another FOIA request was filed to seek the acceptance and rejection letters for all the candidates from the University’s HR department.
Multiple attempts have been made to contact Sterritt, but none have been successful. The Crimson White also made two calls to Bob Davis Saturday morning and got no response.
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Editor’s Note: The Crimson White’s Editor-in-Chief Savannah Bullard, Managing Editor Ben Stansell, News Editor Rebecca Griesbach and Assistant News Editor Jessa Reid Bolling contributed to the reporting and writing of this story.
Story 3: UPDATE: Davis no longer a candidate for OSM director, questions remain regarding hiring process
The Crimson White received confirmation on Friday from Monica Watts, Associate Vice President of Communications at the University of Alabama, that Bob Davis is no longer a candidate for the Director of the Office of Student Media position.
“The only thing I can tell you right now is that he is no longer a candidate for that position,” Watts said.
The Crimson White published multiple articles last week detailing ethical concerns surrounding Davis’ time as editor and publisher of the Anniston Star.
Watts did not confirm if Davis had been offered the position and did not offer an explanation on why Davis was no longer a candidate for the position.
The Crimson White received a tip from a candidate for the OSM Director position, who will remain anonymous. The applicant was interviewed via phone during the hiring process and spoke via email with the head of the search committee, Dana Bonifacio-Sample, during their process (see screenshot 1).

The applicant confirmed an update to their online application on the morning of Wednesday, July 17 that read “Not Hired.” The applicant also said neither the job description nor their submitted responses to the application questions were viewable, when previously they could view their submission in its entirety before they were deemed “Not Hired” (see screenshots 2 and 3).


Later in the day, the applicant checked their inbox and found an email dated July 17 at 1:43 p.m. from the University’s human resources department that read: “After careful consideration, we regret to advise that we will not be moving forward with your application” (see screenshot 4).

The University has a staff online recruitment process that lays out the steps involved in hiring someone for a position via an online job requisition on the UA On-Line Recruitment System, which is the process the candidates for the Director of the Office of Student Media most likely underwent.
Part ‘B’ in the 11th step in the recruitment process reads: “Once the offer letter wording is approved, the HR Recruiter will approve the Offer Card and will change the applicant status to ‘Online Offer Made.’” Part ‘A’ in the 12th step says the University will “change the status of remaining candidates to ‘Not Hired’ with the appropriate not hired reason.” For the anonymous source’s application, no comments were left outlining why they were not chosen (see screenshot above).
The Crimson White received an email from Watts on July 22 that read: “The Director of Student Media position remains open” (see screenshot 5).

“My assumption would be that you wouldn’t reject the candidates until you had hired someone,” the applicant said. “I found it unusual that they would close an application before they made a decision.”
Bob Davis, Mark Mayfield and Julie Salter were the three finalists for the position. The anonymous applicant was not one of the three finalists for the position.
The finalists were each interviewed in person by the hiring committee, the OSM staff and student leaders from The Crimson White, 90.7 The Capstone, Alice Magazine and Bama Life newsletter. The three finalist interviews (see screenshot 6) took place separately on June 11 (Mayfield), June 12 (Salter) and June 25 (Davis).

The Crimson White attempted to contact Davis to confirm if he had been offered the position but received no response.
The Crimson White filed several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding emails to and from Adam Sterritt, the Assistant Vice President for the Division of Student Life, on Friday, July 19. Sterritt has the final say in the hiring of a new director. Watts said the requests should be processed by early next week.
Story 4: Emails show candidate was offered, quickly terminated from OSM director position
Emails obtained by The Crimson White through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request confirm that Bob Davis was offered and accepted the position of Director of the Office of Student Media at The University of Alabama, but was terminated five days later.
RECAP
The Crimson White has been investigating Davis and the hiring process for the Director of the Office of Student Media since receiving a tip on July 17 that raised concerns about Davis’ journalistic ethics during his 14-and-a-half years working at The Anniston Star.
Here’s a timeline of how the investigation unfolded and the subsequent articles that were published:
Wednesday, July 17 at 5 p.m. – The Crimson White received and began investigating a tip about the allegations against Davis, which first surfaced in an article by Eddie Burkhalter for the Alabama Political Reporter (APR) on January 1, 2018.
Burkhalter, who worked with Davis at the Anniston Star for nine years, first discovered the allegations that H. Brandt Ayers, The Star’s former publisher and former chairman of the Board of Consolidated Publishing, had “spanked” multiple female reporters in the mid-1970s from a column by APR columnist Joey Kennedy on November 16, 2017 that detailed how his wife, Veronica, was forcibly spanked by Ayers during her time at The Star.
Burkhalter claimed that he was ordered by The Star’s managing editor Ben Cunningham, on Davis’ instruction, to not contact any of the victims and to not pursue the story. Burkhalter then left The Star and published the story with APR.
Davis offered a comment in his defense, saying Burkhalter was “a disgruntled employee who tried to make the story about himself, not about real suffering of people, which is the story that The Anniston Star pursued.”
In that initial article, The Crimson White also included comments from Davis’ column that he wrote in the aftermath of Burkhalter leaving The Star and publishing his findings elsewhere. He gives his side of the story in his column, saying, in part, that the editorial staff “hadn’t made a decision to publish a story, and … hadn’t made a decision to not publish a story.”
When asked if Davis had been offered the position, Davis and two other members on the search committee declined to comment. Adam Sterritt, the Assistant Vice President for Student Engagement & Academic Partnerships in the Division of Student Life, makes the final decision on the hire. He could not be reached for comment.
Thursday, July 18, at 8 a.m. – The Crimson White published an initial article detailing ethical concerns about a potential candidate for the director of student media position.
Friday, July 19 – The Crimson White filed several FOIA requests regarding the hiring status of the candidates for the position as well as any correspondence between UA employees, Sterritt and David Grady (who would resign from his position as vice president of Student Life a week later, for reasons neither he nor the University disclosed to the public) regarding the allegations against Davis.
Saturday, July 20 – After being approached by and reaching out to CW alumni and Cunningham, who still works as the managing editor at The Star, The Crimson White published a second story of their responses to the allegations against Davis and his potential hiring. Neither Sterritt nor Davis responded to repeated attempts for comment.
Monday, July 22, at 12:24 p.m. – The previous story was updated to reflect that Sterritt was reached on Monday morning and declined to comment on Davis’ hiring status or the allegations against him.
Thursday, July 25 – Joey Kennedy penned an editorial for Alabama Political Reporter, criticizing Davis’ consideration and candidacy for the director position. In one paragraph, he wrote:
“If Davis was ever a finalist for the position or if, remarkably, he is eventually hired, that is an indication of two possibilities: 1. Either the university selection committee didn’t vet Davis very well, or 2. The selection committee simply didn’t care they were about to hire a director of student media who tried to kill a credible story about sexual and physical abuse that was detrimental to Bob Davis’ own boss at the time.”
Friday, July 26 at 3 p.m. – Monica Watts, Associate Vice President of Communications at the University of Alabama, confirmed that Davis was no longer a candidate for the OSM Director position. However, she declined to comment on whether Davis was ever offered the position and did not offer an explanation on why Davis was no longer a candidate.
“The only thing I can tell you right now is that [Davis] is no longer a candidate for that position,” Watts said.
Emails obtained that day from a candidate who was not hired for the position, however, revealed that the position had at one point been filled, given the assumption that this position was filled in accordance to the University’s staff online recruitment process. This candidate, who remained anonymous, works in student media in another state.
Tuesday, July 30 at 5:05 p.m. – Emails obtained by The Crimson White through FOIA requests confirmed that the position had been offered to Davis – who later accepted – before the first piece was published about the ethical concerns against him.
THE EMAILS
Emails from the University of Alabama Human Resources department show that an offer for the position of OSM director was sent to Davis, referred to as Charles Davis in the emails, on July 15, 2019. An excerpt of the email reads:
“Dear Charles: On behalf of The University of Alabama, we are pleased to offer you the position of Director, Student Media – 508717, in the department of 860301 – Student Media Admin reporting to Adam Sterritt. “If this offer is accepted, your employment with The University of Alabama will be at-will and may be terminated, either by your employer or supervisor at any time, for any reason, with or without notice. Please signify your acceptance of this offer of employment by accepting the offer online through the UA Employment System.”
An email dated July 16, 2019 at 8:07 a.m. with the subject line “An Online Offer has been made” from UA recruitment to Sterritt states that an online offer was made to Davis and that the status of the remaining applicants was to be updated to “not hired.” An excerpt reads:
“At this time, you should start to update the status on the remaining applicants. It is important that we accurately track the statuses of all applicants. All applicants that were interviewed for Director, Student Media – 508717 should be moved through ‘interview complete’ status for tracking purposes. If you have an alternate finalist for this position, please move them to the ‘alternate finalist recommendation’ status. All remaining applicants should be moved to the ‘not hired’ status once the requisition has closed. Please contact your HR Recruiter, Megan Riehm, if you have any questions.”
An email dated July 16, 2019 at 9:11 a.m. from the HR department with the subject line “Offer accepted notification” shows that Davis accepted the offer. The email was sent to Sterritt, the final authority on who is hired for the position. It reads:
“Dear Adam Sterritt, Charles Davis has accepted their offer for Director, Student Media – 508717, requisition 508717. Their tentative start date will be on the 1 Aug 2019. Please contact your HR Recruiter to change the start date.”
An email from Sterritt was sent to Davis on July 20, 2019 at 7:36 p.m. with the subject line “Termination Notice” that said Davis was offered the chance to withdraw from the OSM director position but that Davis has declined to do so. This termination notice was sent two days after The Crimson White published an article detailing allegations of Davis’ involvement with killing an unfolding story about sexual assault at The Star. The CW had published its second story, “UA alumni react to OSM controversy,” earlier that day. The email reads:
“Dear Mr. Davis, You were provided the opportunity to withdraw from the process associated with filling the Student Media Director position, which you have declined. An employment relationship involving you and the University cannot succeed. This note serves to immediately terminate both further discussions and any at-will working relationship between you and the University.”
SEE THE EMAILS
The Crimson White received the following four documents on Tuesday, July 30 as a result of a FOIA request filed by CW Editor-in-Chief Savannah Bullard on Friday, July 19. They are presented in chronological order, which is the same order in which their excerpts appear in the story above. Click the links below to read the documents.
Of the five FOIA requests filed by The Crimson White’s reporting team, only one yielded results. The other four, according to Open Records and Policy Specialist Lindsey Hughey, did not yield any “responsive public documents” for the requests.
The Crimson White reached out to Adam Sterritt, Bob Davis and UA’s Division of Strategic Communications employees Monica Watts, Deidre Stalnaker (Director of Communications) and Chris Bryant (Assistant Director of Media Relations) on Thursday, Aug. 1 to comment on the results of the FOIA requests. No messages were returned by Sterritt, Davis or Watts, and Stalnaker and Bryant said they had no additional information about the email exchange or unfulfilled records requests. Bryant said he would work on getting that information.
TRACI MITCHELL NAMED INTERIM OSM DIRECTOR
On Thursday, Aug. 1, Traci Mitchell confirmed that she will serve as interim director of the Office of Student Media while the search for a director proceeds.
“I’m happy to assist in any way I can during this transition period for our department,” she said in an email. “Our retired director, Paul Wright, left some large shoes to fill and it’s going to take all of us some time to get used to him not being here. He raised UA Student Media to new heights and I will work very closely with our professional staff and students so we can keep that momentum going.”
Mitchell currently serves as one of the OSM’s assistant directors, with a focus on business operations and handling budgets. Her career in student media began at the University of Mississippi, working in various roles at its Student Media Center.
Moving forward, Mitchell said she hopes to maintain the OSM’s “solid” foundation and serve as a smooth transitional force while a new director is sought.
“I’ve been passionately involved with college student media for a very long time and have witnessed incredible growth and unprecedented changes and challenges,” she said in an email. “Student Media has a strong, rich history at the University of Alabama. I’m excited to continue to work with our incredibly talented professional staff and students as we continue to move forward.”
Mitchell was unable to answer any questions regarding whether she will still serve on the search committee for the OSM director, a position she previously held during the first search. She also was unable to comment on the status of the new search and how it will be conducted, in terms of personnel or protocol.
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