SOMETIMES coming up with a topic for this column can be difficult, but this week it was easy, thanks to an e-mail I received Wednesday. The e-mail pointed out that in Wednesday's online edition of The Cavalier Daily, a photo of Gov. Mark R. Warner accompanied the article about Sen. John Warner. By the time I checked the Web site, this mistake was not there, so I assume someone at The Cavalier Daily fixed it.
But the e-mail gave me a starting point for something I have been itching to write about for quite some time: The Cavalier Daily's Web site at www.cavalierdaily.com. Simply put, it is amazing.
To start with the obvious, the site has every staff-written story for each day's issue. The first page has the day's top stories from the various sections, and you can click on a certain section to see only the stories from that section. Of course, maybe putting every story online, as well as photographs, is not so obvious. See www.dailyprogress.com for an example.
This brings up the difference between college and professional newspapers. College newspapers generally are free, so they have nothing to lose by putting every bit of information online. Some professional newspapers, especially smaller ones, may fear that by putting too much information online, they may lose subscriptions and therefore lose money. Paying someone who has the expertise to create a top-notch Web site may be a prohibitive cost as well.
For larger professional newspapers, these concerns do not stop them from making their sites as informative as possible. For example, www.washingtonpost.com, instead of only containing the day's news, features profiles of many restaurants, bars, and clubs in the Washington, D.C. area. Extra online information can separate an adequate site from an excellent one.
The Cavalier Daily site has plenty of extra information. Going from top to bottom on the main page, the site offers student course evaluations, a place to sign up for daily e-mails, a section devoted to the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath, a searchable database of reviews from the Arts & Entertainment section, a list of faculty salaries, two sections devoted to information about the University, an update on construction around Grounds and online polls.
I checked out each of these sections, and although not perfect, they are extremely useful. The course evaluations depend on people taking the time to submit them, but they are better than nothing at all. I found a particular movie review with no problem, although when I read the review, the date for when it appeared in the newspaper was incorrect. I submitted a question to the Hoos Asking? section and am breathlessly awaiting a response. The construction update left me a little puzzled, as I saw no mention of the construction that has been going for more than a year at the School of Law, but construction at O-Hill that has not begun received top billing.
Wait, there's more. The Cavalier Daily's site contains archives back to 1995 that can be browsed issue by issue or searched through with specific search terms. This is an invaluable resource as a newspaper is a record of history, and the archives give users a chance to see a few years of that history without heading for the microfilm section at the library.
The main page also has a Resources section that contains information about The Cavalier Daily, its staff, its policies, how to advertise in the newspaper, and how to join the newspaper. Some of the information here was incomplete or out of date: "Join the CD" has last terms' staff listed, and Staff has missing information concerning department associate editors.
The Resources section also contains a link to The Cavalier Daily policy manual, which outlines general policies for the newspaper and specific policies for each department. Not many newspapers tell their readers the exact rules they play by even if most readers do not look at the manual; it remains an example of The Cavalier Daily holding itself to a set of standards in order to serve its readers.
The Cavalier Daily touts its Web site in print, and rightfully so. The site has received an Online Pacemaker award from the Associated Collegiate Press, making it one of the top college newspaper sites in the country.
Wednesday's issue, however, featured an enormous ad for the Web site on page A4. At the bottom, the ad mentioned the addition of a new URL, www.cavdaily.com. The URL worked fine. Unfortunately, the ad also attempted to list the old URL, but it listed www.cavalierdailyi.com. If you want people to look at your site, giving them the right address usually is a good idea. Of course, I doubt that many readers noticed the error, and if they did, they were smart enough to realize it was an error and did not try to use it.
In the mid-1990s, many journalists did not understand why a newspaper should be online. Thanks to sites like www.cavalierdaily.com and many others, they understand now.
(Matthew Branson can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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