SOMETHING SCARY appeared in this newspaper Monday. Introducing itself to the readers, the new managing board wrote an editorial that concluded thus:
"At the end of the day, as one of the many passionate speakers at Saturday's elections in Jefferson Hall said, 'We are an organization that learns primarily by making mistakes.' Over the course of our term, we look forward to learning from a myriad of new mistakes. We need you, our readers, to call us on them."
It's true, of course, that newspapers make mistakes; it's true, too, that they benefit greatly when their readers call their attention to them.
The problem is, if you set out to make mistakes, you're certain to succeed.
I don't mean to suggest that the managing board, or anyone else on this paper, has actually set a goal of making mistakes. "We set a certain standard every day when we walk in the door," new editor-in-chief Elizabeth Mills told me. The goal is to get things right. It's not that the editors look forward to making mistakes, she said, but "realistically, we will make mistakes."
That's true. But if this editorial is taken at face value, it looks too favorably on mistakes the newspaper has yet to make. To say that we learn "primarily" from mistakes and that we "look forward" to those lessons is to place a value on getting things wrong that at least rivals the value of getting things right. It risks diminishing the sense of shame that ought to help stimulate us to strive for perfection: If mistakes are how we learn, why worry about making them?
The fear of getting things wrong is a powerful motivator, especially in journalism, where so many things can go wrong without anyone noticing until the paper is published. If you know that you'd be ashamed to find a factual error in your newspaper, that you would cringe at the sight of a grammatical error in one of your headlines, that the realization that you'd published something unjustifiably harmful would make you want to hide in your office till the end of the year, but the desire to make it right would draw you out to face the people you'd hurt -- then you will be vigilant against these things. And if there is a mistake you do not catch, there will be others that you do.
Some may say, as Mills assured me she does not: But it's only a student newspaper. It's a learning experience.
To this there are two answers, independent and sufficient.
As Aristotle taught, we develop both character and ability through repeated action. That is why practice is important. Good journalism rests on both character and ability. If student journalists, even in their earliest work, go in with the attitude that mistakes are OK, and that nothing better should be expected of them, they will not develop the perfectionist ethic that demands that everything in the paper be as it should be, or, for that matter, the judgment to know when the need to get a paper on the stands in the morning outweighs an opportunity to improve it. Nor will they develop the skills they need to minimize mistakes. In short, they will not learn what student journalism has to teach -- neither in craft nor in character.
But there is more to being a student journalist than learning journalism. In the latter, current work is mere preparation for later work. But student journalists do real journalism. This is a real newspaper. You are a real reader. And the University is a real community.
Just as in the "real world," student journalists put out newspapers (and broadcasts and Web sites) that their readers need to be able to rely on. That's especially true at our University, whose traditions of student self-governance mean that the stakes in student politics are substantial.
Should we think, then, that any student journalist who makes a mistake must be dismissed from the newspaper? That an error in reporting should be treated like an honor offense? Of course not. I doubt I've ever seen a perfect paper -- student or professional. Like other newspapers, The Cavalier Daily has made mistakes in the past and recovered from them, and even great individual journalists sometimes do make mistakes, sometimes big ones.
In one sense, then, an imperfect paper will have to do: The perfect one is impossible. But in another sense, an imperfect paper will never do: It must not be the goal. The fact that you cannot produce a flawless paper is no excuse for not trying. And one must find a way to feel the pain of every imperfection without being overwhelmed by it or losing one's pride in what is still, on the whole, a good newspaper.
Most importantly, one must remember the difference between today's paper and tomorrow's paper. Today's paper is flawed, but tomorrow's isn't -- not yet. And it's worth striving to keep it that way.
Alexander R. Cohen is The Cavalier Daily's ombudsman. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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