PERHAPS The Cavalier Daily staff has simply gotten into the midterm spirit, but if last week's papers were graded, it appears the paper is well on its way toward a strong semester performance. The Fall Break obviously helped focus the editors and staff - every issue from last week demonstrated a strong commitment to the news and University community with a broad range of articles and features.
Tuesday and Wednesday did a nice job of covering University news, including the now infamous streaking charges. Life's Tuesday feature on Miss Virginia was informative and the movie reviews seemed particularly well done. Doug Strassler, in particular, gave me some director-led ploys to watch for in "The Story of Us." I also liked Brian Horne's themed "Media Monitor" column on sports, politics and ratings. If you missed it Tuesday, I strongly suggest you check it out online. National and community news had only a small showing in the majority of last week's papers. Friday, however, made up for the earlier deficiency with a two-page layout for news on the nation and world, as well as a number of front-page community-related articles.
Nation and World covered everything from the UN international study on women's wages to Toronto's alleged serial cat killer. We also learned of the city's crackdown on front-yard parking near Scott Stadium and were treated to some political analysis of the current political races for the state Senate and House. Has a poll been done on the student body's support of the candidates? Do incumbents reign supreme on Grounds as well?
Friday's paper even had a human-interest story recounting Brown College's turtle tragedy. Don't misunderstand me. I don't wish to make light of Ms. Hall's loss - although I do think her story would have been presented better in Life than on the front page. In fact, when you pair the problem of Brown College's heating system (115 degrees! And no one was informed?) with the EPA's recommendation that the University pay $29,989 for violating environmental regulations for oil-spill prevention, I believe you, like me, will become increasingly glad The Cavalier Daily is on hand to report what actually goes on at the University. How many other violations simply aren't released for the general public? Is the problem there, as with the oil-spill regulation violations, simply a problem of the University not analyzing the situation enough?
The Cavalier Daily's coverage of the Virginia Film Festival was superb and I hope next year the paper will link up their Web site with the Film Festival's Web schedule early on to aid in event planning and finding and purchasing movie tickets. Life's feature on the football program's equipment team was both lively and interesting and I hope the section increases its coverage of restaurants as in the Hot Cakes review. Are reviews indexed on the paper's Web page for easy browsing? That would be helpful feature the online editors might consider.
Sports kept us informed throughout the week on the happenings of Virginia athletics. There was remarkably little on the football team, despite their win against N. C. State. Men's and women's soccer as well as the volleyball and field hockey teams received most of the attention. In any case, the sports staff continues to give us detailed articles on the teams and players for the University and for that, I give them, and the rest of the paper's staff, an A for last week.
There are, however, still a few areas where work is needed. First, too many corrections were needed last week. A health article must give accurate information regarding its subject. Similarly, a story recounting the positions of local politicians shouldn't be accompanied by a caption that falsely attributes a position to a candidate.
Part of the problem here may reside with the editors who lay out the paper rather than with the writers, who may not compose the captions for pictures. The same also may be true with the mistake in the caption for Wednesday's front-page article on Phi Kappa Psi.
The caption reads, "Phi Psi fraternity members are trying to resign their FOA agreement with the University." What a difference a dash makes - I reread the story twice trying to figure out why Phi Psi was acting against the Inter-Fraternity Council Judiciary Committee's recommendation that they reestablish their FOA with the University. Finally, I realized the fraternity wanted to "re-sign" or reestablish their agreement - not resign it.
Second, there are still some layout problems that need to be addressed. Wednesday's front page, for example, is awkwardly divided into top and lower halves that are neither symmetrical nor balanced. The Maddux/Couric debate story is well situated between two face-off pictures, but the effect is diminished by the blocked story paired with a useless, picture-led article above. In general, blocked stories do better lower on the page rather than close to the masthead, where they cause the page to seem unbalanced.
In Wednesday's case, using the box up top along with the long midway dividing line further down means that there is nothing stylistically left to separate the Honor Committee's recommendation to the Board from the picture of Roger Clegg or the Computerworld's Commerce Department Ranking.
In other issues, the "Inside" box is cleverly used to divide the bottom stories of the paper; however, here it must be placed in the right bottom corner to try and balance the blocked story in the top left. Ultimately, the bottom page comes across as a jumble of stories and a picture while the top is over-heavy.
What grade would you give The Cavalier Daily? Write me at Ombud@cavalierdaily.com and let me know.
Read More
EDITORIAL: Scapegoating students will not stop hazing
By Editorial Board | 7 hours agoInstead of retroactively responding to extreme hazing allegations, we, and especially the University, must begin asking more probing questions about the role of fraternal organizations on Grounds.
EDITORIAL: Celebrating and reflecting on The Cavalier Daily’s independence
By Editorial Board | 6 days agoOur independence grants us the ability to ask the hard questions and to say what University representatives cannot.
ARRAS: U.Va. must revise the Sexual Assault Prevention Training module
By Aoife Arras | April 17, 2024In addition to its failures in interactivity, the module lacks details specific to the University and discusses key concepts in universal terms.
