BLOGS AND the Internet, they say, are going to kill newspapers.Newspaper editors tend to think otherwise. The argument goes that readers depend on the editors to sort out all that information online to tell them what's relevant. You buy the paper for the editor's expertise in news judgment. As I wrote in a column in the fall, the criteria for news judgment are proximity, timeliness, impact, human interest, unusualness, prominence and conflict.
College fourth-year Karin Agness, who founded the conservative women's group the Network of Enlightened Women in fall 2004, thinks that there was a lapse in The Cavalier Daily's news judgment last week. The paper did not cover a debate on Thursday between her group and the University Democrats over the merits of the play "The Vagina Monologues." Agness said two women from each organization squared off and debated for 45 minutes in a packed room. She said that at least 80 people attended, despite there only being 60 seats.
"I was just surprised. Every day The Cavalier Daily is looking for something to cover as news. I thought this was a pretty significant event," she said. "There wasn't any huge story that would have made sense to overshadow it. ... A lot of stories that they did cover were stories that didn't directly happen at U.Va."
Every year the play is performed, and invariably there is discussion on the subject. Last year, NEW brought a speaker to Grounds and there was a blitz of coverage in The Cavalier Daily, including at least one news article, several letters, columns and op-eds. This year, the editors decided to run the debate as point-counterpoint on Thursday on the Opinion pages. However, the News editors did not send a reporter to cover the debate, and did not mention it in Friday's paper.
Editor-in-Chief Michael Slaven said printing arguments on the Opinion page was equivalent to covering the issues in the debate, and news coverage would have been overkill. But to me, giving an issue space on the Opinion pages is not the same as having a News story on it. I'd like a little more breathing room between the Opinion and News pages.
Slaven said they may have sent a reporter had they known the attendance. Yet responsible news editors would dispatch a reporter just in case. I've sat through plenty of speeches, gone to plenty of possible news stories, only to phone and tell my editor it wasn't worth covering. Editors depend on reporters to be their eyes and ears.
Friday's news stories included the Virginia Senate passing an indoor smoking ban, the University Judiciary Committee's endorsement of increased sanctions for hatred-driven incidents, and three articles on higher education issues: standardized tests, spikes in college applications and a study on graduate students.
The college application story referred to numbers published five days earlier, the grad student story referred to a studypublished two days earlier, and the article about standardized tests wasn't pegged to a specific day, but rather reported that a commission was in discussions on the topic. Even the smoking ban was passed on Monday, five days before the article appeared.
The debate happened the night before, on Grounds and involved University students. So check off timeliness and proximity. By definition, there was conflict.
Slaven argued, however, that the topic was not unusual enough because it happened year after year.
"I wouldn't classify the same old debate as newsworthy," Slaven said.
While it might not have belonged on the front page, since the students involved weren't discussing anything quite new, in my book it would have been worth a short story inside the paper. At the very least, there could have been a brief to let the community know that it happened. Local coverage is why we pick up the paper, after all.
***
On Valentine's Day, two editors at the University of Illinois' daily student paper, The Daily Illini, were suspended after the paper ran the controversial cartoons of Muhammad that have sparked violent protests around the world. I was curious to know whether editors here would publish the cartoons, which only a handful of major papers around the country, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, have printed.
"I don't think that's something we'd consider doing," Slaven said. "You can see them online, and I have. It's something we've been covering on the Nation and World page. ... My philosophy here is that our strengths lie in covering issues at the University of Virginia, and I don't see any reason why it's our duty as a college paper to print those."
But what about the Opinion columns regarding the subject? Wouldn't it make sense to run them next to the column?
The paper has a policy of only running original graphics, not photographs or other reproductions, and no distinctive faces, to avoid editorializing. If the possibility was raised, Slaven said he would likely discuss it with the Junior Board-- the section editors. For now, he's sticking with his decision.
"I think that the descriptions of them do them justice," he said. "I see no reason to needlessly offend people."
Lisa Fleisher is The Cavalier Daily ombudsman. She can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com
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