PUTTING out a paper on a daily basis can be a very stressful task. Besides the basic reporting and photography, staffers also sell and design ads, write headlines and captions, draw graphics and comics and design and lay out all of these pieces on the page. During and after all of this happens, editors read and revise each of these elements. Last week, frankly, the editors at the CD fell short in several areas. The spring sun and rain and that tugging feeling that the semester is nearing its end may prove a bit distracting, but there is still time to sharpen that editing eye and make sure the easy questions are being answered.
The first of these might be: "What is the timeliness of this article?" Last Monday, for instance, the News page ran an article about the creation of an oversight committee for Charlottesville's main water supplier, the Rivanna river basin. The piece begins, "Virginia General Assembly members adopted a bill last Monday... " "Last Monday?" Why did it take a week for this article to make print?
The Life section ran on Monday a feature concerning a winter study abroad trip that occurred "this past January." Why wasn't this piece written directly after the trip?
The Life section also ran face-off columns last week, as columnists Brett Meeks and Megan Peloquin issued gendered reactions to "Sex and the City." The show's finale was at the end of February! Why wait until now to have face-off columns covering it? Staffers and editors would be wise to do a little more advance planning and have articles pass the timeliness test.
Three other articles this week felt incomplete. On Monday, the Health & Sexuality section ran a lead article on dieting that tried to accomplish too much in the paltry space it was given. In its 19 mostly one-sentence paragraphs, the article attempts to cover the Peer Health Educators' "Nutrition Mission Challenge," the role of University nutritionist Paula Caravati, the Atkins diet and the vegetarian lifestyle. This piece really should have morphed into the first in a series of articles on dieting/lifestyle changes (as the section's name is Health & Sexuality, not Sex & Sexuality or All Sex All the Time). The focus of this piece was supposed to be the Nutrition Mission Challenge, but all readers discovered of this event is that the PHE started it, asked students to keep food journals and report back at 8 p.m. in the Tuttle lounge that night. What was going to happen at the meeting? Certainly this piece could have been improved and lengthened and taken up some of the space exhausted by column-like pieces posing as more straight-forward research-based articles. (I'm talking to you, "Lubrication: Does it make a difference?" and "Chemical reactions excite the senses.")
The News section ran on Wednesday an interesting article about University ROTC graduates and their experiences serving in Iraq. I commend the task of localizing a mostly national story like the war in Iraq. It would have been more thorough, however, to ask if the soldiers had witnessed or experienced any of the hostility toward Americans that other national media are plastering throughout their respective forms.
The Focus section's article on the Consortium of University Publications should have mentioned early on the fact that the CD is not involved in the appropriations process. Also, the piece's headline didn't seem to match, as it claimed the story concerned various student publications and their "struggle to survive." The text of the article, however, didn't mention the strain on these groups until its 10thparagraph.
Last week's papers led to plenty of layout and production gripes. Why were there no photos of the performance of "NINE," which was reviewed on Tuesday? Local A&E pieces provide a great opportunity to break up the weekly album/book cover scan or movie shot boredom that can limit the page. Why pass that up?
Information boxes in the Focus section lately have been breaking up text and making it difficult to follow the flow of the article, as was the case with the "Appropriations Process Example" box, especially since it occurred at the fold of the page. Try wrapping words around boxes rather than having the graphical elements sit on top of text.
Jump page notations on the News page suffered from editorial sloppiness too: All notations on Wednesday's paper said to see page A2 when the jump fell on A3. Column headlines on the Sports page on Wednesday were clearly in the wrong font. A Life article on big pranks featured a tiny headline, unless the "Gotcha" halfway down the page was supposed to pass as a head. And what's up with the random colored text boxes like that around Wednesday's ROTC story?
Yes, many of these gripes seem minor, and pointing them out may be nitpicky, but they add up. Messing up jump notations once isn't such a big deal, but when it occurs with many other slip-ups, it can be frustrating.
Last, but not least: It's OK to run an April Fools' joke issue, but why was it not up on the Web? The April 1 paper online is simply blank. It is understandable, I suppose, if the CD doesn't want those online stories inadvertently taken as truth, but there could have been at least a notation that the April 1 issue was not available online, or something to that effect. Right now it just looks like an error, and there have been too many of those lately.
Emily Kane be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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