Different cultures begin counting a year's days at different times. In academia, the year begins with the fall semester. The Cavalier Daily's leadership has a lot of changes planned for this new year. Some of them have already been implemented. There's a new website and a new policy about comments posted to the website. Some of the changes should roll out soon - the weekend edition and the interviews with on-Grounds experts, for example.
The new website looks good, though seems to run a little slowly - but not as slowly as The Washington Post's. The new comment policy is part of a continuing battle, for those who care enough to wage it, to find a balance between a free and open exchange of ideas and a free-fire flameout zone. I'm not sure anyone's gotten that exactly right yet, but it's important to keep trying.
The weekend edition seems to be following the example of the nation's largest newspapers. The interviews seem to be a very good idea. The rest of the media world turns to the University's experts to explain complicate issues. (I haven't seen Larry Sabato on television for days now.) So why shouldn't The Cavalier Daily?
That said, some of the biggest and most important stories you're likely to read about in this new and improved Cavalier Daily are carryovers from before this shiny new beginning. There's a new president and new football coach at the University. The $3 billion capital campaign is still going on. The disturbing cases of Morgan Harrington, Yeardley Love and Kevin Morrissey are still unresolved. All of those have generated questions about policies, behavior and attitudes among the University community, so coverage of them must do more than simply answer questions about the events. Coverage has to include what the community is doing in response.
On that count, I was a little disappointed in a story about Get Grounded ("StudCo backs Get Grounded," Sept. 1). It quoted Danielle MacGregor, a fourth-year architecture student who helped create the campaign.
MacGregor said in the article, "A general sense of things that happened in the spring led us to this, and to question why this is happening in our community and what we can do to change it."\nWhile I can understand why someone would talk in such broad terms about "things that happened in the spring," I think the paper should have spelled out some of those "things." The general rule is to never underestimate readers' intelligence nor overestimate their knowledge. There may be someone reading The Cavalier Daily who doesn't know about "things that happened in the spring." Or there maybe someone who doesn't remember those things completely accurately. That's part of what a newspaper is supposed to do, make sure the record stays as straight and complete as possible.
That's why I particularly liked one line in Rebecca Rubin's story about Jeffrey Clark, the Tea Party candidate for the Fifth Congressional District race ("Tea Party candidate may drop out of race," Sept. 2). When Rubin quoted Isaac Wood, communications director at the University Center, she slipped in that he is also a "former Cavalier Daily columnist." That may seem very basic - and it is - but a consumer of news doesn't always get that kind of honesty from every media outlet.
I also liked Bethel Habte's story about the privacy - or lack of it - students have on the University's computer network ("Flirting with the bounds of privacy," Aug. 30). It's an important issue. And the way Habte chose to tell it touched on what seems to be a perpetual issue on Grounds, the workings of the honor system.
Some things, obviously, need to be carried over into this season of beginnings. Stories that need continued coverage. Practices that need to be followed. Standards that need to be upheld. That's kind of my job. I'm here to help the staff at The Cavalier Daily do the best job they can and to take them to task when they don't. It's also part of my job to help you, the readers, get answers from The Cavalier Daily. We call the job "ombudsman." Some papers call it "public editor." Either way, I'm supposed to be your representative. But I'm the paper's representative, too. Think of me as a translator. I'm not in the newsroom, but I know how newsrooms are supposed to work.
I teach, but I've been a journalist since Ronald Reagan's first term as president. I've worked for newspapers, alternative papers, magazines, radio stations and websites. I've been a university newspaper's adviser and, for the past few years, The Cav Daily's ombudsman.
If you have a complaint or a question, let me know. I'll do my best to get you an explanation.
Tim Thornton is the ombudsman for The Cavalier Daily.
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