I READ an interesting article a week ago in The Washington Post. It focused on how a fairly ordinary task - riding the bus - had become a dangerous activity for many people around Jerusalem. The story featured photographs of people on the bus and quotes from some of the riders.
Is the story remarkable? On its face, no - it was just like any other piece of journalism where a writer and photographer deal with the people who make their story. But then I started thinking about the point of the story: the danger of riding the bus and how some people felt fear every time they boarded but felt the bus was their only option for transportation.
The journalists - the writer and photographer - were on the bus. There was no guarantee they would survive their assignment. They are hardly unique. Journalists all over the world put themselves in harm's way in order to tell stories the public needs to hear, and inevitably some of them die doing their job.
What do these journalists have to do with The Cavalier Daily? Covering events around the University does not put Cavalier Daily staffers in any sort of danger.
What international correspondents in areas of conflict and Cavalier Daily reporters have in common is this: responsibility. In many cases, both groups are telling their audiences stories they would not otherwise hear. As the only source of information, a reporter carries a heavy responsibility that includes accuracy and completeness. He must ensure that he gives the audience the most important facts, that he provides enough facts to paint a fair and complete picture, and that he gets all the facts right.
As ombudsman, I have tried to monitor how well The Cavalier Daily fulfills its journalistic responsibility. I have tried to mix praise, criticism and explanation in a way that both the newspaper's staff and readers can appreciate.
Faced with my final column of the year, I find myself looking back and finding things I could have done better. My biggest concern was timeliness - with a Monday column, I did not want to cover material much older than the past week's issues. The drawback to this was that because I usually could not formulate my topic(s) until late in the week, I found myself without enough time to contact everyone I wanted. I felt that some of my columns were not as complete or as in depth as they should have been, and when that occurred, I felt like I was shirking my responsibility.
On the other hand, trying to cover a topic adequately in 800 words could be a tremendous challenge. My recent column on race and The Cavalier Daily stands out as one that ran to about 1,000 words before I trimmed it. I exceeded the word limit many other times, and I hope the extra words were not a waste of space.
I did not receive as many reader e-mails as I expected, but most of the ones I received ended up in the column in one way or another. To answer a recent e-mail - yes, I read the entire paper every day. I did not start with an agenda to analyze the paper department-by-department, and my failure to mention a particular section of the paper should not be taken as a lack of concern for that section. Rather, my topics were week-to-week decisions that came from what I saw in the newspaper, reader e-mails, and my own views on journalism issues. I considered writing about the Arts & Entertainment section as early as the middle of fall semester, but because other topics kept presenting themselves, I did not focus on the section until last week.
Now for some final thoughts.
For all its faults, The Cavalier Daily keeps its spot as one of the top college newspapers in the country. I think a lot of complaints would disappear if students here had some opportunities to read the junk produced by newspaper staffs at other colleges. As is the case with many jobs, journalism is easy to do poorly but exceedingly difficult to do well. The Cavalier Daily strives to do well, and even when it fails, it still surpasses the quality of most college newspapers.
I thank the previous Managing Board for hiring me as ombudsman. Having an outlet for my thoughts has been a privilege, and I hope at least a few people have found my musings to be insightful.
I also thank my semi-faithful readers, especially Chris, Greg, Guy, Josh, Matt and Tom. Receiving face-to-face feedback was nice, and yes, I agree that the Good Ol' Song issue still hasn't received enough coverage. Right.
In closing, this year has reaffirmed my faith in the great value of journalism. We live in an information society, and reliable sources of information should be treasured. I hope that as the years pass, I can continue to look to The Cavalier Daily as a reliable source.
(Matthew Branson was the 2001-2002 Cavalier Daily ombudsman.)
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