THE HBO hit "Sex and the City" has inspired more than one college column about the nude and the lewd, and last week, The Cavalier Daily proved it isn't immune to the trend. I only wish it had done it in a classier fashion.
I understand the newspaper received both positive and negative responses to Kelly King's Life column of Sept. 10, "It takes all kinds to be in the V-Club." But all the comments I received were negative, and I have to agree with them. King's piece, the inauguration of a biweekly column, was crude, poorly written, and as far as I could tell, pointless. The writing was in some cases needlessly graphic, and in other cases mean-spirited.
The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics has a clause about maintaining "good taste." Good taste, like pornography, is difficult to define but easy to spot. Good taste is why mainstream journalists don't use obscenties in their writing. Good taste is what keeps stories about sexual abuse cases from reading like pornographic novels. King's column was not in good taste.
She used two particularly distasteful words which are classified in the American Heritage College Dictionary as "Vulgar Slang," and which should not appear in a daily newspaper. There was a particularly vulgar paragraph about "people who like to have fake sex."
And then at the end, King negated her entire column, which mocked people who have chosen not to have sex, by saying that she thinks it's a personal choice.
Sex columns are en vogue in colleges now, as student newspapers can legitimately get away with things professional newspapers don't do. But regardless of the audience, sex is a topic that should be handled sensitively. That's not to say sex columns can't be humorous, but they should also have a purpose. There's no need to stoop to gratuitously risque fluff writing. It's simply not good enough to write something just because you can.
Cavalier Daily Editor-in-Chief Brandon Almond says King will be tackling topics like relationships and sexually transmitted diseases. I look forward to seeing substantive and researched columns. But before I drop this topic, I must point out to readers who complained about King's views that newspaper columnists, regardless of what section they write for, are entitled to, and in fact should exhibit, strong opinions. However, I would have launched a more robust defense had the column not been so contradictory.
Reporting numbers
Newspaper stories often must deal with statistics and numbers in order to give the reader an idea of how prevalent or scarce something is, or how something compares to something else.
Numbers are a very important tool for readers, who can use them to assess an issue. So, reporters who write stories about trends must be especially careful to include them. A reader pointed out some holes in last week's story about Latino students' low graduation rate.
The story claimed that "a greater proportion of Latino high school graduates are currently enrolled in college than white or black high school graduates," but gave no statistics to back up that statement.
"Although Latinos attend college in large numbers, the study showed that Latino high school graduates earn college degrees at lower rates than every other population group," the article stated, again without figures.
The article went on to quote an assistant dean saying he didn't think this was the case at the University, again without the numbers. This story cried out for statistics, and because of that wasn't nearly as informative as it could have been.
And while I'm on the topic of statistics, I must mention a poll in The Cavalier Daily's special September 11 issue, which was otherwise a fantastic piece of work. The newspaper did not disclose the poll's methodology. As the survey of 156 students was admittedly not scientific, a margin of error was not necessary, but the newspaper still should have given the exact dates students were polled and explained how they were chosen, and whether they were polled by phone, e-mail, in person or in some other manner.
Polls must always include as much methodology information as possible so as to let the reader know how to take the information they provide.
As I said, otherwise the September 11 pullout was a wonderful example of collegiate journalism. The paper dealt with the topic gracefully and sensitively, even included a New York dateline, and had some wonderful original photos. The article about the Afghan University student was particularly well-done. Kudos to The Cavalier Daily staff for a quality effort.
What do you think? Like a story? Think there's a hole in the coverage? Write and tell me.
(Masha Herbst can be reached at
ombud@cavalierdaily.com.)
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