THE YEAR is off to a good start. A common misconception about the position of ombudsman is that his role is solely one of a professional complainer, or a sort of expert kvetcher, if you will. However, the ombudsman should also take time to point out elements of the paper that are working well and to encourage the continuation of good practices. While it is my hope to use this column to talk about journalistic issues in depth, this week will just give a general "state of the paper" listing.
Layout
The layout, or how the paper organizes text, photos and graphics on the page, is good. It is clean-looking, without being too crowded. This week had a nice mix of graphics and photos, with the images generally working to advance the articles, or to draw the reader's eye to the story. Sports photography remains strong, with plenty of action shots, particularly with the coverage of the first football game.
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The whole ad pages, where the page is nothing but advertising, actually work very well. It is advertising that allows The Cavalier Daily to be distributed at no cost to readers, so advertising is important. But by putting a large number of those ads on a single page with nothing else, the reader has the opportunity to skip the advertising in large measure if they so choose. The concentration of ads on a single page also allows the paper to lay out more of an article uninterrupted, without sending a reader searching throughout the paper for continuation of articles.
Coverage
Coverage this week was good in its scope. There was a nice mix of coverage, including local community, University business and administration, health topics, sports, business and student life, including the Greek system. No particular area outweighed any other, so there was a balance to the coverage.
The national and world news page is a particularly useful feature. By offering a sample of the main stories on the AP wire, The Cavalier Daily serves not just as a college community paper, but as a paper offering full news coverage. This is something that many college newspapers do not offer. It serves to give a quick overview so that the average student is conversant with the issues of the day. Nation/World also serves to let you know when you might want to buy a New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post for in-depth coverage of an issue of particular interest to you.
Comics
The comics page is off with a bang this year. Like most college newspapers, some of the comics are a little edgier than you would see in a more mainstream newspaper. The cartoonists are more free to use various graphic styles, language and situational jokes that are not always available to cartoonists in other settings. Particularly strong is Clay Yount's Action Daxton, which has a Japanese animé look, is brilliantly drawn, and is sufficiently bizarre to be a truly original strip. This week's strip with the snow monkeys in the little hats was a gem.
Also on the comics page is a nice selection of puzzles to keep you occupied during long, big-auditorium lectures. Will Shortz is the New York Times puzzle editor, the great crossword puzzle creator of his age, and it is nice to see his puzzles are the standard which The Cavalier Daily has chosen. Mr. Shortz is also a graduate of the University's School of Law, so one can only hope the paper is getting an alumni discount. (See, that's a joke. The Ombudsman is not without a sense of humor, feeble though it may be.)
Opinion
The opinion and editorial pages evince a variety of voices, bringing a welcome diversity of viewpoints. The editorials and opinion pieces are timely, generally thoughtful, and unabashed in their advocacy for a viewpoint. They are supposed to give readers a subjective take on a topic, often digging deeper than you can in an news piece, with the hopes of spurring thinking and debate on an issue.
This week's University Forum brought a nice perspective by including a column from Nadine Dabby of the Daily Californian, at the University of California-Berkeley. While the debate on U.S. News and World Report college rankings is one that goes on each year when the rankings are released, it is good to get a varied perspective. The inclusion of viewpoints from outside of the University community, when appropriate, shows a good collaborative and innovative approach to the Op/Ed page that is refreshing.
Miscellany
This week, I only had three things which I couldn't resist commenting upon. First, the online version of the paper had a link to the print edition on the home page. Typically, when a publication does this, it is because they are developing stories separately for each format. The Washington Post, for example, does this. However, when you click the link for The Cavalier Daily, you get a grainy image of the front page of the print version. Stop that, please, it is frustrating and silly.
Second, there was a headline note on the Friday edition of the online version that read "Type your 3-column boxed headline here." Production staff do these kind of things to "hold space" as layout is being developed. Occasionally, one slips through. Not a catastrophe by any means, but to be avoided.
Let me emphasize that if these are the issues I have chosen to address this week, it means that the newspaper has been doing very well indeed. In fact, typically I will not be addressing the occasional production goof, misspelling or other small error unless they become a glaring and consistent problem. I just chose the two small examples above as examples of easy errors to make.
I can see the letters and e-mails already. "How dare you criticize such picky issues? You yourself said you had three things to comment on, but then only listed two. Are you going to write a column on yourself?" So let me get to that third item. The Ombudsman is all for gender-inclusive language, and firmly favors the alternating use of "his" and "her", as is the increasing practice of most professional style guides, newspapers and other institutions. However, the ombudsman box which appears on the Editorial and Opinion page refers to me as "she" and "her." The Ombudsman thinks this movement has gone too far. After consulting with a hand-picked team of world-class physicians, geneticists, biologists and my wife, I feel compelled to inform you that the Ombudsman has been determined to be a male. The Ombudsman expresses relief, for this means that he will not have to shave his beard.
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