Editor’s note: The Daily will run a media literacy column by Sarah Cavanah, interim executive director of Oklahoma Scholastic Media and former Daily staff writer, every Tuesday to give readers a behind-the-scenes look at The Daily and media coverage in general.

I couldn’t handle being Landry Jones — and not just because I can’t throw a spiral to save my life. In the last two weeks, seemingly the entire country has been gossiping about him. Is he not good enough? Is he the best? Is he better off without the mustache?

Landry Jones is 21 years old. Our society has agreed that he’s only been mature enough to buy a wine cooler for about five months, but anytime Jones, or any other student athlete, takes to the field or court, I think to myself that the scrutiny and pressure is way too much for someone who is so young.

Just like OU’s student athletes, OU’s student journalists are doing their training for the future out in the public. And the protective part of me — or maybe the patronizing part — sometimes wishes both groups didn’t have to.

Here’s a great, and recent, example. It started Wednesday, Sept. 8, when Sports Editor James Corley included a small box with three OU student athletes’ pictures along with arrows and brief descriptions critiquing whether the athlete was trending up, down or holding steady in performance. One of our readers wasn’t happy with Corley criticizing one of the athletes in such a public way.

I don’t care who you are or how old you are, if you open up a newspaper and see your face next to a statement of negative worth, you’re going to feel it, and it’s not going to feel good.

So, why did Corley do it, especially when he said the whole reason behind the box was to give a little promotion time to the other fall sports?

“I think analysis and opinion is a fundamental part of sports coverage,” Corley said. “Players messing up is just as much a part of sports as them doing well. We wouldn’t be doing our duty (as journalists) if we just (covered) the positive in our stories.”

You could argue that’s easy to say, given that it wasn’t Corley’s picture on the page with the down arrow, and you’d be right. But Corley does know something about “messing up” and doing it in a very public way.

During the first week of school, Corley scored his first Page 1 story. OU-Texas tickets were going on sale the next day.

There was a little problem, though. Corley misread the e-mail. It was OU-Texas A&M tickets that were going on sale.

Like any team, pretty much the whole Daily staff can take some blame for the mistake.

Corley wrote the story, and he missed the mistake he should have caught while wearing his editor hat. But, it also went by the copy editing desk, whose main role is to help ensure what goes into The Daily is accurate.

And, in proper buck-stops-here fashion, the upper management had to take responsibility for the systemic factors that led to this string of fumbles.

In the end, though, it was Corley’s name on the story, and he had to take the brunt of the heat.

“I was ashamed,” he said. “It looked bad for me and it reflected badly on the whole paper. It also affected a lot of people.”

Those people included the students who got up early to buy tickets that weren’t on sale and the OU Athletic office, which had to deal with the substantial fallout from the bad info. More than 10,000 copies of The Daily are circulating on any given day, and literally anyone in the world can read the website. That’s failing in a very public way.

Corley said he’s learned his lesson. He’s now taking nothing for granted and is extending that scrutiny to the reporters who write for him.

The upside of failing in public is that the experience tends to stick. It’s why pretty much everyone in journalism education says that classroom knowledge is great, but no one’s ready to work until they’ve had some practical student media or internship experience.

And, I guess in the end that’s why I shouldn’t want to shield student athletes or student journalists from the glare of playing in public.

They might not all end up playing in the “majors,” either in athletics or the media, but there’s a good chance they are going to be important people who we’re all going to want to perform well under pressure.

In the end, we should let them play, pass judgment and be thankful it’s not our turn in the spotlight.