A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the importance of striving for, achieving and maintaining balance in news reporting in The Cavalier Daily. Another essential element in good, effective reporting is diversity. In a newsroom, diversity of thought, of background, of experience and of perspective is critical to providing readers with helpful information.
When faced with a topic or story, a reporter can, quite literally, only ask the questions she imagines need to be answered. Her background and prior experiences are going to drive the sorts of questions that come to mind. With research she can expand her scope but, again, will be limited by her own worldview. Asking more and different questions can illuminate a story, make it more relevant for more readers and provide better context. Sometimes, the only way to be able to frame those questions is to have someone else in the newsroom who will think of them. A simple example of this might be a story having to do with physical accessibility around Grounds. A person who uses a wheelchair or who has some limit on their mobility will think about and see Grounds quite differently than a fully able-bodied person. While the story could be factually correct and offer some interesting or helpful information without input from a person facing different challenges navigating Grounds, a story that incorporates those challenges, especially from the reporting side, is likely to be more informative and effective.
Other areas in which diversity is important cut across the student experience at the University. From financial aid, housing and food choices available on Grounds to how student health is set up there are innumerable topics that affect the day-to-day life of people here. It is critical that people who have different life experiences and different expectations and needs contribute to thinking about stories and questions on these topics.
Further, one of the most important things The Cavalier Daily does is serve as a voice of the students separate and distinct from the administration of the University. But students do not have one voice. Exploring stories from multiple angles and asking questions rooted in differing experience and expectation will make The Cavalier Daily a better voice for more students.
In order to be effective in this role there needs to be more information in stories than a report on what Student Council did in a meeting or what someone offering an amendment to change the honor system intends with their effort. In fact, I’m certain that alone I cannot come up with the full range of questions that would be interesting to everyone reading The Cavalier Daily. The more people who can have some input the better the overall set of questions will be and the more varied the background of those people, the better.
Diversity is more than quotas and more than making sure there are a certain minimum number of people who tick whichever box we want to count that day. Indeed, much of the time viewing diversity in this way implicitly sees (usually) Caucasian men as the default normal and we just count everyone else as being diverse. The diversity of a group can’t be determined just by looking because what comprises diversity is also thought and experience. The Cavalier Daily should strive to encourage diverse thought and use it to inform their news reporting to better serve their readers.
Christopher Broom is the Public Editor for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at publiceditor@cavalierdaily.com or on Twitter at @CDPublicEditor.
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