If a good feature story showcases a journalist's writing skills, a solid breaking news story demonstrates the writer's reporting skills. Feature writers have a great deal of freedom to try new things and write artisticallyoften because they have a fair amount of time in which to write their stories. But the reporter who breaks a news story can only be judged on the details within the article and the number of relevant questions that are answered.
Using those criteria, The Cavalier Daily gets an "A" on its coverage of the reported assault of Daisy Lundy.
The attack allegedly occurred around 2 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26, which is after the paper's official deadline. The newspaper was informed quickly, which is a credit to its cultivation of sources. And rather than go to bed and get the details in the morning, the staff got on the story immediately, gathered as much information as it could in the wee hours of the morning, and posted the story on www.cavalierdaily.com approximately three hours after the suspected attack.
This is an effort of remarkably professional caliber. The story turned out to be not just a University story, but also a Charlottesville story, a Virginia story and a national story. The Daily Progress, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Washington Post and the Associated Press picked it up. The Post even acknowledged The Cavalier Daily's reporting, which is the sporting thing to do when another newspaper breaks a big story.
The Cavalier Daily itself ran no fewer than eight letters to the editor on the subject in the following day's paper. That those letters were received before the story was printed in a hard copy of the newspaper, and that so many students and alumni thought to write to the newspaper about the attack is evidence not only of the importance of the news, but of the esteem in which the newspaper is held by members of the community. The cause-and-effect relationship between the Web site posting of a breaking story and the publishing of letters to the editor in the next days print edition also demonstrate the smooth and effective function of The Cavalier Daily's news machine.
The newspaper's Web site is not just an HTML version of the newspaper, and the staff's handling of this story reinforces that notion. The Web site, www.cavalierdaily.com, is a product in and of itself. It is the most potent tool the staff has to deliver breaking news in a timely manner. We live in an age where more and more people get at least some of their news online, and a paper that doesn't recognize that will quickly lose readers.
After all that deserved praise, I am reluctant to give in to my only gripe about the story, but I suppose I wouldn't be very responsible if I let it go. In both of its stories about the reported assault the week before spring break, the paper reported that Lundy was assaulted, and there was no attribution. No "according to police," or "Lundy reported that she was assaulted."
I fully expect to take some fire for the position that the newspaper has to treat the alleged assault as a reported assault until and unless police come out and say that it definitely was an assault. My understanding as of the end of February was that police were still investigating. Though they and the FBI are involved, and though the investigation is treating the incident as a hate crime, it's important for a newspaper to report only what it absolutely knows to be true. The Cavalier Daily can know that police believe the incident was an assault, and The Cavalier Daily can know that police are investigating a reported assault. But unless a reporter actually saw an assault take place, The Cavalier Daily cannot know that there was an assault.
I should add that The Cavalier Daily was not the only newspaper to make the mistake. I saw it in The Washington Post as well. On March 1, the Post reported, "The FBI has joined the investigation into the racially tinged assault this week on a University of Virginia student during her campaign for student government president, campus police said yesterday." I would have preferred to see leads like the following Associated Press opening: "A candidate for student council president at the University of Virginia told police she was assaulted by a man who made a racial slur."
It may seem to some that such treatment of a story is insensitive to the victim. But unless a journalist knows for sure what happened, unless he has witnessed an incident, or unless there is a confession or a conviction, he must be skeptical.
(Masha Herbst can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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