So what's the purpose of a college newspaper, anyway? Is it meant to compete with professional newspapers? Does it act as a watchdog for the world microcosm that college campuses attempt to be? Should it serve students by giving them insight into academics and a university's social scenes? Is it a training ground for future sports writers, freelance photojournalists and investigative reporters?
It's all of the above, and during the last two semesters, the staff at The Cavalier Daily have had ample opportunity to demonstrate each facet of its mission.
The staff broke a national story and weighed in on Student Council elections and the issue of representation on the Board of Visitors. They won a score of awards in a statewide competition in which The Cavalier Daily went up against professional, not college, papers. And in the process, they learned about the ins and outs of daily journalism, some by trial and error, some by snippets of journalistic ethics and responsibility handed down by decades of former staff.
That's all great stuff. But if you ask me, the most important thing The Cavalier Daily accomplished during the year was provide a living vehicle for the life of the University community. It did so through its News and Focus pages, by gathering the pieces of Charlottesville's daily existence, acquiring stories through diligent reporting and tipster suggestion. In its Sports, Life and Arts and Entertainment pages, the newspaper gave refuge to the reader's softer pursuits. In its Opinion pages, it provided a vital discussion ground for ideas both liberal and conservative, radical and traditional, gravely serious and lightly entertaining. The newspaper is where history is written before it becomes history. Looking at The Cavalier Daily's achievement from this end of the year, it appears the story has been more than satisfactorily told.
This would not be possible without the engagement of the community in the newspaper's operation. Letters to the editor are the most prominent example, but they are by no means the only way in which a community can become engaged in the production of a newspaper. All news departments depend on tips for some of their best stories. And reporters need to be told how they are doing from time to time, whether the critique is positive or negative. Readers are engaged when they don't believe everything they read, when they question and debate. Readers should, of course, demand nothing but the truth on the front page. But they should also be aware of the human limitations of even the most conscientiously objective journalists. Rarely is there enough space in the paper to truly hit every angle of a story, and rarely are newspapers able to give an issue the follow-through it deserves. It comes down to resources: time, money and warm bodies.
And through their letters to the editor, letters to me and likely a number of other interactions of which I am unaware, the readers of this newspaper have engaged themselves. Some of the most vocal are professionals living in other states who read the paper online every day. There are a few who barely have ties to Charlottesville at all. As pockets of student activism continue to decry, as they have for years, the apparent apathy of their peers, they would do well to look to The Cavalier Daily for pieces of the solution. Good old fashioned black-and-white retains a lot of power, and members of the University community may be hard-pressed to find students more dedicated to their cause than the leadership of this paper, who put in enormous amounts of time and energy and take a lot of heat, even and especially within their own pages.
So, when you pick up this paper or read it online next semester, don't disengage over a sloppy headline or a story you think might be biased. Write a letter. Talk to someone about it. Encourage the flow of ideas and discussion; don't block it. Most of all, recognize what The Cavalier Daily represents -- a lens through which to look at life in Charlottesville, a lens that you can help adjust. Make it yours.
(Masha Herbst can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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