I’m still thinking about the April Fool’s edition of The Cavalier Daily. The issue drew a lot of feedback (more than most normal issues of The Cavalier Daily), most of it negative. There were, though, many comments from people who were upset that articles were pulled and further dismayed that the Managing Board chose to apologize for some of the pieces in the joke issue. Those objecting to the apology lamented the loss of free press, free speech or the ability to make jokes without offending someone. It doesn’t seem to me that if the management of a publication decides, on its own, to pull stories that aren’t meant to be factual in the first place that there is any free press issue to worry about. The same is true about free speech. The Managing Board decided to pull the pieces and apologize after they heard from enough others that what they published was, in fact, offensive because they didn’t want to be offensive and hoped apologizing would make that clear and help heal the wounds they’d caused. The staff of The Cavalier Daily was, in fact, free to publish the satirical articles.
Then there is the concern about being able to make jokes without offending someone. Being able to publish (or speak) humor that pushes the edge of (or goes right past) peoples’ comfort level has a long history. Often humor seems an effective way to highlight uncomfortable truths and realities. In newspapers, humor usually shows up in the form of comic strips, political cartoons or columns by writers who use humor regularly. That is, humor is woven into coverage in a particular way and in an ongoing manner. There isn’t a special effort to be funny, especially for an entire issue’s worth of content. In The Cavalier Daily the ongoing form is the Humor section. I think some of the efforts there miss, but some of it is pretty funny, as I read it. Whatever else the humor pieces are, they are topical and an effort to grapple with current issues facing the people writing them. They are also clearly the thoughts of the author, rather than coming off as what the entire staff of the paper finds funny which is how it seems people received the April Fools’ issue.
We love our traditions at the University, and the April Fools’ issue of The Cavalier Daily has a long history. There are, in fact, long traditions of April Fools’ joke issues at many collegiate publications. You can see several examples at the College Media Matters blog, which covers collegiate publications.It’s easy to understand the impetus to keep the tradition going. Publishing a daily paper is a grind. It’s hard work and requires consistent dedication of time and mental energy. Being able to relax a bit and have fun while making jokes is something I’d imagine most everyone could appreciate is a good thing. But in the face of pushback and people who were clearly offended, I keep thinking: should collegiate publications generally and The Cavalier Daily in particular still produce April Fools’ issues at all?
I was thinking about this question when I read the text of Garry Trudeau’s acceptance speech at the Long Island University's George Polk Awards ceremony.Trudeau is most famous for the “Doonesbury” comic strip that he has been writing for more than 40 years. He spoke about the use of satire and said, in part, while talking about the comics he wrote very early on in his career:
“Why were they so subversive? Well, mostly because I didn't know any better. My years in college had given me the completely false impression that there were no constraints, that it was safe for an artist to comment on volatile cultural and political issues in public. In college, there's no down side.”
Trudeau may have been right that there was no downside when he was in college to trying to use humor or satire as commentary. Even 20 years ago, the April Fools’ issue would have been limited to the print run on Grounds. There is a downside now. As we have seen in the past year, articles and issues of The Cavalier Daily frequently garner national and sometimes international attention. Commenters are not limited to immediate members of the University community. It’s time for The Cavalier Daily to end the April Fools’ issue: it’s not worth the risk of offending people and damaging the reputation of the paper.
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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