A good measure of a newspaper is how it covers a continuing story, particularly one which draws attention from lots of out-of-town media. The Living Wage Campaign has been that kind of story for The Cavalier Daily. Even ESPN covered the issue when Joseph Williams, a walk-on safety for the University's football team, joined the campaign's hunger strike. That is a story the paper missed, but The Cavalier Daily has hardly ignored the Living Wage Campaign. The paper published at least a dozen columns and editorials on the issue in February. The Cavalier Daily also ran a dozen news stories on the campaign between the beginning of February and Spring Break.
Some online commentators think the Cavalier Daily is giving the Living Wage Campaign too much coverage, but it is an important issue and one that's specific to the University, so it is the very definition of the kind of story The Cavalier Daily should cover better and more completely than any other media. The coverage has been good, but it could have been better.
Early on, ("Student activists seek living wage," Feb. 2) Carl David Goette-Luciak, identified as a second-year College student and member of the campaign, declared, "To pay all of our workers enough to meet the basic cost of living would require only one-tenth of one percent of our annual budget." Reporters are famously allergic to math, but this claim needed to be checked. That would have taken some time and research, but it is better for students to know whether speakers' claims are accurate. People get away with the most outrageous things when they are allowed to build their arguments on fuzzy or nonexistent so-called facts. Claims based on actual facts which have been verified by a disinterested party - a newspaper, for example - gain more weight.
In the same story, graduate student Emily Filler said the lowest paid workers on Grounds "are paid considerably below the poverty line even if they work 48 hours a week." That cried out for context. Below the poverty line for a family of four or an individual? What is the poverty line? How much money do those workers earn in 48 hours? How much of that do they take home?
On Feb. 8, folks campaigning for a living wage delivered a petition to University President Teresa Sullivan advocating a minimum wage of $11.44 per hour. At other times and in other places, protestors advocated a $13 minimum hourly wage. That contradiction was not explained until Feb. 27, when an article headlined "Living Wage: the campaign through the years," explained that data from different years were used to reach the different numbers. That should have happened sooner.
Protestors want the University to raise its own wages and to require contractors to do the same. There is some argument about whether the University can make contractors do that. It was amusing to read University spokeswoman Carol Wood declare, "It is not normal procedure for a state college or university to go against the opinion of the Attorney General's office..." ("Strike enters 12th day," Feb. 29) when the Virginia Supreme Court was considering a case in which the University was defying the attorney general's request for records. The reporter should have asked Wood to explain that apparent contradiction.
In the same story, it is made clear that the 2006 attorney general's opinion the University referenced as a reason it could not require contractors to pay a specific minimum wage is not really binding.
Attorney generals' opinions simply are not legally binding. But in an addendum published online
Read More
PARTING SHOT: On the art of walking and chewing gum
By Nathan Onibudo | YesterdayStudent journalism, and maybe even life more generally, is about holding space for multiple conflicting truths.
PARTING SHOT: Confessions of a nepo baby
By Grace Thrush | 2 days agoWhile I can’t point to one specific “aha” moment where I finally started to dispel my self-consciousness and claim my pride for the paper, I got there gradually over the course of my term as managing editor.
PARTING SHOT: Asked and answered
By Honor Wood | 2 days agoLooking back, the answer has been abundantly clear all along. I did it for the people.
