L AST WEEK was an interesting one at the University. Student officer elections, the informed retraction proposal, and the start of a new capital campaign. Oh yeah, the Virginia men's basketball team beat Duke on Thursday night.
I think most students felt the Duke game was the biggest story of the week, and those students probably looked to The Cavalier Daily for game coverage. At least two students were not impressed with the paper's efforts, as I received two e-mails containing some valid criticisms of the coverage.
One reader got right to the point: "Which men's basketball story is the story and which one is the column?" I assume the reader was implying that the game story, which should be objective, was too supportive of the Wahoos. Having giddy quotes from Virginia players is no problem - what else would you expect? But I saw one misstep - the sentence "Hopefully, Virginia will be able to sustain the momentum from its win over Duke." Boosterism does not belong in a news story. It is appropriate to say "Virginia hopes to sustain its momentum" or something equivalent, especially if it is bolstered by a quote, but the sentence as it appeared sounded like something a fan would say, not a journalist.
The other reader bemoaned the lack of accuracy in the game coverage. For example, "35: Points [from two players], many coming after Travis Watson fouled out." The two players in question combined for two points after Watson fouled out. Two is not many.
The headline for the game story begins, "With Watson on bench, Cavaliers go on second-half run." Problem No. 1: The story mentions Watson exactly once - in the 20th paragraph, when it describes Watson restraining his coach. There is no mention of foul trouble or of Watson being on the bench a long time. That may have been an important aspect of the game, but if it is not a primary feature of the story, it should not be a component of the headline.
Problem No. 2: Watson was in the game as Virginia went on a 15-1 run that trimmed the Duke lead to one point. You would not know it from the headline.
These problems are typical when inexperienced journalists get a "big story," which the Duke game certainly was. This problem is compounded when the game ends around 11 p.m., leaving little time for interviews, thinking out a story structure, and double-checking every detail.
The big story poses a lot of problems. It can have many storylines and many important details - the Duke game featured both. It can force a team of writers, editors, designers and photographers to come up with a high-quality package in a short amount of time. It can force an emotional student to be an objective journalist. It highlights the reality that when you make a sloppy mistake on a history paper, your TA is the only person who sees it; when you make a sloppy mistake in the newspaper, especially on a big story, thousands of people see it.
When a journalist first encounters this phenomenon, it can be overwhelming and often results in the journalist looking at the product the next day and noticing all the things that were left out, things separating a good job from a great job. The Cavalier Daily's coverage was by no means horrible, but it left room for improvement when the next big story arrives.
Other headlines left something to be desired last week. Thursday's "Council president race ends in run-off" made no sense. If there is a run-off, then the race has not ended. The first round of voting ended, but the race did not.
Tuesday, I was shocked to learn that there had been a presidential election in Mexico - "Presidential election in Mexico results in close call" seemed to indicate that Vicente Fox's job was up for grabs. I had to read the story to see that it was an election for president of a political party, not for president of Mexico. Technically, it was a presidential election, but the headline should have been much clearer.
Tuesday's paper also included a scoop: For the first time, Roger Mason Jr. went on record that he will return to school next year. That is big news for Virginia fans, and I saw one other newspaper reference The Cavalier's Daily's reporting of it. So this was a good scoop for The Cavalier Daily.
Inexplicably, The Cavalier Daily buried it in the next-to-last paragraph of a story on Mason, on an inside page that many readers probably did not read. The reporter set the quote up in such a way as to emphasize its importance - if it is so important, it should be at the top of the story, not the bottom.
One more thing: Contrary to The Cavalier Daily's front page, March 1, 2002 was not a Monday. At least, I hope it was not. I need all the Fridays I can get.
(Matthew Branson can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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