MANY PEOPLE are involved with putting a story into its final form, the form the reader sees upon picking up an issue of The Cavalier Daily. This may seem to be an obvious point, but when mistakes are made in assembling a story, often one person is the immediate target: the writer, the person with the "By" next to his or her name at the top of the story.
I bring this up after seeing a minor error in the Oct. 12 news story "Group questions education standards." The story said the Curry School of Education requires a 2.7 GPA for admission, but the caption of the accompanying photo said the GPA requirement is 2.5. A small mistake, but clearly an avoidable one.
A casual reader will associate only two names with this mistake - the author of the story and the photographer of the picture. But many more people affect each story than a reader may realize.
The reporter does not write the headline that accompanies the story. The reporter does not write photo captions - neither does the photographer. The reporter often may not see how each editor changes his story. Production staffers are responsible for putting the story into the page layout - the reporter probably doesn't know where the story is going or what the package will look like until he sees it in the next day's paper.
In short, a writer puts a lot of trust in the system of the newspaper and the people who run that system. If an editor makes an error and perhaps changes something the reporter actually had correct, no reader on the outside can tell that the reporter got it right unless they call and get an explanation. Usually, the reader will simply assume the reporter did not know what he was talking about.
This can be a painful experience. As a first-year reporter for The Cavalier Daily in 1992, I had a lengthy face-to-face interview with the men's lacrosse coach. I wrote my season preview after that meeting and left the newspaper office before the editor arrived. My editor moved some things around in my story, and in the process, he changed the coach's first name. Imagine my surprise not only to see the error the next day, but also to have a very terse fax sent to me by the sports information department informing me of "my" error. I was left to cover the season opener and to attempt to explain myself both to the coach and to the sports information staffer in charge of men's lacrosse. Looking stupid is not the best way to start a relationship.
Credibility is crucial in any profession, but it is especially imperative in journalism. The job of the "hidden staff" - copy editors, page designers and the like - is important not just because the newspaper needs to have an appealing final product, but also because of the names going on the stories and photos that appear in the final product. No one likes to be associated with a mistake. Acquiring a reputation for making mistakes can hamper any journalist.
That being said, I should share something about what most of my comments have had in common this semester: they point out details that make the difference between a college newspaper being very good and being absolutely top-notch. The Cavalier Daily is one of the best college newspapers in the entire country - it regularly wins awards from the Associated Collegiate Press, and also from the Virginia Press Association, where it competes against professional newspapers.
Frankly, I did not see a lot to criticize over the past two weeks. Some of the e-mails I received concerned displeasure with opinion columns and editorials - that generally is not my area of concern, as letters to the editor or guest columns are the best way for readers to voice dissenting opinions. I disagree with the printed opinions all the time, but my job is about assessing how the paper does its job, not about the opinions of its staff.
I do have one complaint, and it touches on something I brought up in an earlier column: complete coverage of a story. Journalists are notorious for not following up - for pouncing on a story when it's new and exciting, but then not revisiting the story's aftermath because there are other new and exciting stories to cover.
The lead sports story on Oct. 10 reported on a football player who was "critically injured" in a car accident. I have not seen any mention of the player since then. Is he recovering? What kind of injuries did he have? Some sort of follow-up is necessary. I think it is safe to say that if a better-known player had been in a similar situation, we would have seen something more in The Cavalier Daily. If it was important enough to go at the top of page B1, it should be important enough to warrant at least one update.
(Matthew Branson can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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