NEWSPAPERING is a delicate art and an exacting science.
Reporters must write balanced, objective stories. Columnists must forcefully argue their positions. Editors must be careful not to steamroll a writer's voice, but at the same time must be vigilant in guarding the quality of stories and columns. They must be sensitive to the variety of topics on their pages and ensure that all areas of the community are covered.
Layout designers must create eye-catching pages, but must not show consistent favoritism toward one issue or particular type of story.
And all writers must balance their own language preferences and creativity with the need for clear and readable writing that the readership can easily digest.
In the semester's first issues, The Cavalier Daily's staff has done a wonderful job of maintaining variety. Thursday's Sports page had four stories on four different teams: football, field hockey, women's soccer and men's soccer.
Thursday's front page was a good mix of state and university news, including Josh Goodman's informative and well-structured article about state budget cuts. The story carried a solid leads, answered all the fundamental questions a news story should satisfy, and took a deeper look at what the University would do to try to make ends meet. Alexis Unkovic's story about twins doing a virtual internship rounded out Thursday's front-page lineup nicely, giving readers a break from drier, but necessary, material.
My only gripe with that particular day's front page has to do with a story on a voter-registration drive. Paul Quinlan didn't cite any sources in his piece until the seventh paragraph. The third paragraph of the story, which contended that this year's drive was "the most ambitious University registration drive to date," was in sore need of an attribution.
Superlative statements claiming something is the best or the largest should always be cited, as it's very difficult for a reporter to know for sure if a voter drive is the most ambitious unless he has been to all of the other voter drives. Hopefully, that statement came from someone in a position to know, so tell us who it was and how they know. Reporters should write with authority, but they also must give readers a reason to believe what they say. Quoting an expert is the best way to do that.
And in any case, a hard news story should include some attribution before the seventh paragraph. If all of the facts are common enough knowledge that they don't require citation, i.e. if nothing new is being said, then why bother writing the story?
Catherine Dunn's Friday feature about a Web site that rates schools according to their squirrel populations was entertaining, informative and interesting, satisfying all of the requirements of a Life page story. The Life staff would do well to fill their page with similar stories for the rest of the year.
Friday's A&E page carried a nice mix of reviews, as well as Christie Harner's lively first-person account of a trip to Nashville. The pieces were well-written, with one notable exception. Philip Runco's review of a Spoon disc was wordy, convoluted and chock-full of run-on sentences, making it extremely difficult to read. Such flowery writing is better left to academia and perhaps to some alternative magazines. It is true that reviewers can get away with more complicated language than reporters, but like all newspaper writers they must still consider the readability of their work.
A writer's challenge is to know his audience. Few newspaper readers will be patient enough to slog through paragraphs of metaphors, and most people will only pull out a dictionary once, if at all. Writers don't have to "dumb down" their work, but moderation is key. It is possible to write sophisticated pieces that people will understand.
Editors are also responsible for keeping pieces readable while preserving a writer's voice. But excessive prose does not constitute a voice. It's just bad writing.
I'd also like to address the paper's re-designed Web site. I won't dwell on every omitted apostrophe, as there are still kinks to be worked out. There are two problems that need immediate fixing, however, and both involve bylines. Some bylines include the word "By," and others are just names, hanging in empty space between the headline and the start of the story. I'd recommend including the "By," but at the very least, we need some consistency.
Also noticeably absent are columnist bylines in the story teasers on the headlines page and on the individual department pages. Many newspaper Web sites include all bylines, including those of news reporters, in their story teasers. Reporter bylines are a matter of preference, but columnist bylines must be prominent. They are more important than column headlines.
Unlike reporters, columnists develop readerships, and many people read their columns regardless of topic. They read one columnist because they like the way he writes about football, and another because they hotly disagree with her political ideology. Columnists' identities are inseparable from their weekly writings. Their names should be prominently displayed with any portion of their writing, regardless of where on the Web site it appears.
Lastly, four years of archives are missing from The Cavalier Daily's Web site. The omission is due to technical problems associated with the redesign that the online staff is working to fix. In the interest of its readers, the paper should post a note to that effect on the archive browsing page. Ditto for the advanced search function that allowed searches by byline and other factors.
Before I go, I should give the reader a quick rundown of my journalism credentials. I am a University graduate and former Cavalier Daily columnist, opinion editor and executive editor. I've been an Associated Press newswoman since graduating in 2000, and am currently based in Connecticut. Please don't hesitate to e-mail me with inquiries, complaints, praise or suggestions for The Cavalier Daily's staff. I can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
(Masha Herbst can be reached at
ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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