I AM NOT sure where to start. As usual, I have read the previous week's issues of The Cavalier Daily and read my e-mail with an eye toward composing this column, but this week was unlike anything I have ever experienced. As Friday's lead editorial pointed out, before last Tuesday our generation had known little other than complete safety while on American soil.
For this reason, Thursday's "Close to Home" box on the Life page was particularly appropriate. A newspaper's main job is to report the news, but last week, all types of media were depended on for information, but also for hope. To provide a voice for non-staffers outside of the "Letters to the Editor" section was a smart move - one designed to be part of a daily section and also to offer some comfort to readers who may have felt similar emotions to those expressed in the box.
Of course, Wednesday's issue was the big one. It was a challenge for The Cavalier Daily, and all college newspapers, because one of the most valuable journalistic tools is perspective. Journalistic perspective is developed with age and experience, and The Cavalier Daily does not have large amounts of either of those compared to most professional media.
That said, Wednesday's issue was excellent. The screaming headline on the front page, "DEVASTATION," is an example of picking just the right word - with one word, the headline conveys both the physical disaster and the irreparable emotional and psychological harm done.
The photographs were powerful images of the tragedy. Strangely, I found one of the most haunting images to be the sports photo of an empty Scott Stadium - maybe because I had seen all the other photos on television. The seating area of Scott Stadium is empty most days of the year. But seeing the photo, and knowing why the stadium remained empty the rest of the week, was a reminder of how our day-to-day lives were altered.
Overall, all sections of the paper did a high-quality job of dealing with Tuesday's events. This is not to say that there were not shortcomings in the coverage. On a horrific and confusing day like Tuesday, attention to detail by the media becomes even more important than usual. Both the Associated Press and The Cavalier Daily, and no doubt countless other media outlets, used the term "Washington, D.C." to refer to practically the entire Northern Virginia area. Dulles International Airport was described as "in Washington" and "about 25 miles from Washington" (the latter is correct), and the Pentagon was described as "near Washington," "in Washington, D.C.," and "in Arlington" (the first and third are correct).
These are nitpicky examples, and the inconsistencies probably did not confuse anyone. To use the perspective idea again - compared to what happened, these mistakes really do not matter. But during the day Tuesday, there were television reports of explosions at the State Department and on Capitol Hill and a fire on the Mall - even now, I am unclear if any of them occurred because I have heard no other reports of them. These are details that are incredibly important, and irresponsible treatment of them by any media does a disservice of the worst kind to the nation.
Now to drop much lower on the scale of importance. Wednesday's comics page carried an announcement explaining that many of the cartoonists could not complete a strip for the day because of Tuesday's events. This was incorrect. Some of the cartoonists had turned in strips for the entire week on Sunday, and their strips did not appear.
The editor-in-chief composed the announcement and described it in an e-mail as "an error of miscommunication and false assumptions." Basically, the editor-in-chief received faulty information from a staffer on the status of some of the comics, with the explanation that appeared being what he was told. Again, it was hardly the most important thing in the paper, but it provides an example of how large crises can often cause small details to be overlooked.
Last week was rough for everyone, and writing a column addressing the coverage of it is not my idea of a good time. Every few words, I have stopped and thought about Tuesday, about how I sat in front of the TV and tried to get in touch with my fiancee - my fiancee who works on the block next to the White House and drives by the Pentagon on her way home. She is OK, but thousands of others are not.
In our attempts to maintain normalcy, the routine comfort of the morning paper is a small but important one. Unfortunately, it will be a long time before the newspaper will not contain a daily reminder of how our sense of normalcy has been shattered.
(Matthew Branson can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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