Local experts
Sometimes you don’t need to focus on local issues to make good use of local resources. The Cavalier Daily news reporters have a valuable outlet for political analysis in Politics Prof. Larry Sabato’s Center for Politics, and they have made good use of it in recent weeks. Lital Firestone quoted center spokesperson Geoffrey Skelley in an article about Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli and the Virginia governor’s race.
The expert opinion from the center added good depth to the story and, I think, helped the reader put the information in context. Skelley also provided analysis and historical context for Caelainn Carney and Jenna Dickerson’s article on Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis’ talk last week. Both articles also contained quotations from University students involved in politics. The combination worked well, I thought, to help readers understand the statewide governor’s race from a student perspective while utilizing a tremendous resource at the University.
By contrast, an article published online over the weekend about serious issues with repayment of private student loans did not contain information or analysis from expert sources similar to the Center for Politics. Carolyn Schnakenberg and Henry Pflager reported on a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report about complaints and problems with private student loan repayment. The only quotations from a University official were from University spokesperson McGregor McCance who said, essentially, that the University doesn’t have much to do with private student loans and besides that they haven’t had any complaints. While I am sure that’s true, there are certainly experts in the various student aid offices at the University who could help Cavalier Daily readers understand what this report might mean. This seems like a critical issue for Cavalier Daily readers, especially students. And those readers would be better served, especially when it comes to the significant amount of data and statistics in the article, with more context and analysis that made use of experts in and around the University.
It seems to me that this is a situation in which the immediacy of online publishing may have rushed the reporting, writing and editing processes too much. While not everything needs to wait for the print edition, the fact of having a website available on which to publish quickly doesn’t necessarily mean it’s best to do so. On an issue like this, The Cavalier Daily can be of tremendous service to its readership but only if the reporters have time to do a thorough job. Simply reporting information from another source is appropriate at times, but this topic seems to call for more. With so much focus recently on Access UVa cuts and the student response to them, financial aid has been front and center at the University, and reporting on the issue should reflect that more carefully.
Reader reactions
It seems that if the Cavalier Daily wants a bump in reader response and active comment threads they should write about football players. Or at least they should write about football players speaking at Valediction. Conor Kelly’s opinion column “The descent of Manning” has drawn a few dozen comments so far (that’s pretty active, comparatively) and many of them are paragraph or more in length. In addition there was a rebuttal piece by former Cavalier Daily Opinion columnist Isaac Wood, a Storify of Twitter reactions to the announcement of Manning as the speaker, a news article by Jenna Dickerson http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2013/10/peyton-for-valediction and a sports piece by Kerry Mitchell. I’d urge everyone to read through all of it. It’s an interesting lens on debates about what is important at colleges and universities, what is valued in our society and what is and ought to be the focus on Grounds.
Christopher Broom is The Cavalier Daily’s public editor. He can be reached at publiceditor@cavalierdaily.com or on Twitter @CDPublicEditor.
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