SOMETIMES, traditions cause strange things to happen. Last week's issues of The Cavalier Daily provided an example of that, and some explanation is necessary.
Monday's issue featured an article describing the staff elections accompanied by a photograph of the new Managing Board. Problem: In all five issues last week, the Managing Board listed above the editorials remained the same as it had been for the past year.
Under "The CD," a section that appears under the editorial, a reader finds, "Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the Managing Board." Well, which Managing Board? The one listed above the editorial, or the one that, according to Monday's paper, just took office? It looked especially strange in Friday's edition because it appeared the Managing Board was thanking itself for a job well done in the first few paragraphs of the editorial.
The answer, although there is nothing in the newspaper to indicate this, is that last week's editorials were the opinions of the new Managing Board. This means that the quoted sentence above was false for those issues, assuming that the five names above the editorials are the Managing Board - why should a reader think otherwise?
Usually, this is not a big deal. The week after staff elections is a week of transition, and the delay in changing the names in the masthead is designed to give the new Managing Board a week to get used to its new responsibilities before "officially" taking charge. The Cavalier Daily has handled the transition this way for at least 10 years, although an event last week raised the question of whether it should continue to do so.
An Honor Committee representative e-mailed me about what he perceived to be an editorial about-face by The Cavalier Daily. He pointed out that on Jan. 23, The Cavalier Daily's editorial supported the informed retraction measure. But on Jan. 29, the editorial attacked the same measure. The reader did not have a problem with the change, but he wrote, "I was surprised to see that no acknowledgment was made of the prior stance, nor any reasons given for the change."
Here is the reason: Different Managing Boards wrote those editorials. But the names above both editorials were the same - no wonder the reader was confused. For one week, a reader who is not familiar with the transition scheme (this means almost all readers) will attribute editorials to the wrong five people. If more serious issues were to arise, some staff members might find themselves in a bind regarding who is responsible for what - the people listed in the paper, or the people who actually did it? This is an issue The Cavalier Daily may wish to address in the future.
Part of the annual rite of transition is an increase in typographical errors. With everyone learning new jobs, production of the newspaper tends to take longer, and often typos and grammar errors worm their way into the paper because everyone is worried simply about finishing each day's issue rather than details.
But just as I struggle to understand what basketball announcers mean when they call a bad pass by an 18-year-old a "freshman mistake" (What, did he suddenly forget the basics of basketball as soon he left home?), I find it difficult to absolve the staff of silly mistakes simply because of last week's transition.
"Recieves" in a front-page headline. "I before e, except after c ..." and all that. Bodies are "interred" in a cemetery, not "interned." One lead editorial referred to a "hoard" of students - unless someone is collecting students and stashing them somewhere, the correct term is "horde."
All three mistakes could have been avoided by consulting the dictionary. At the same time, looking up every little thing takes time, something that can be in short supply when new editors are trying to finish the issue. An editor always should have a dictionary and a stylebook within reach when editing - if looking something up will involve getting up and hunting for a book, it is easy to be lazy and let mistakes slip by.
There were other errors as well, but they were more of the extremely ticky-tack variety that comes from new editors being unsure what gets indented when, what is all caps and what isn't, etc. If those mistakes still are around in April, that is a problem. But a few mistakes during transition that most readers won't even notice - not a big deal.
Finally, I will take note of an e-mail I received from a reader complaining about The Cavalier Daily's "improper use of words." At the end of the e-mail, the reader wrote that she was throwing in her two "sense." I hope she was trying to be funny - if not, something about stones and glass houses comes to mind.
(Matthew Branson can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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