I would very much like to see more links on The Cavalier Daily’s website. I was disappointed when I read Nazar Aljassar’s column online on September 5 and found no links. His entire piece centered on a New York Times piece from August 24 written by John Eligon about Michael Brown, the young man killed in Ferguson, Missouri. There was, though, not a link to be found. One could argue that by the time it was published ten days after the original Times article, anyone interested had already read or heard enough to follow Aljassar’s piece. The online version of the paper, though, isn’t a one-time snapshot like the print version. Readers may access it at any time and from anywhere. Links are easy to include and should be included where possible. When an entire article or column is based on responding or reacting to something else, a link should be provided to the reader.
As Aljassar did, columnists for The Cavalier Daily often respond to other writers or pieces. Elaine Harrington wrote a column published on September 26 in which she responded to criticism from a blogger about the University’s Inter-Sorority Council’s “no contact” policy. My initial excitement at the inclusion of links to outside sources in her column online was tempered by what I found. The first link in her column was to, effectively, an anonymous blog post. The second link, which looked like it might go to something listing ISC rules, went to an older Cavalier Daily article, which was dated in 2000 . Both the links and Harrington’s column prompted me to think more about what I’m looking for from The Cavalier Daily and its writers. Why is Harrington responding to a blog post? I noted that the blog was shared on Facebook more than two hundred times but I’m not sure what that tells me. Even if I could identify the author of the blog — and I’m fairly certain that if I pick apart the username on the blog and do some Googling I could — the piece is still a personal blog with no particular evidence offered or journalistic standards to meet.
The points Harrington argues in her column don’t need to be set in opposition to someone who wrote elsewhere. The blog serves as a convenient foil. It takes the place of “some argue” by offering one person that does. It also works to keep the discussion entirely contained within our community by accepting the original framing in the blog post as a description of the problem Harrington lays out and addresses. I would have been interested to know, for example, what other schools and other sorority councils do regarding the issues of contact with new students. I’d like to see more columns that link to outside sources that engage on the same levels as the writers working for The Cavalier Daily. I encourage the writers to look for evidence and robust arguments to grapple with.
As I continue to ponder what, exactly, a college newspaper should be in general and what The Cavalier Daily should be specifically, I increasingly believe such a paper can and should serve as a bridge between a potentially insular college existence and the world outside that existence. Links online may seem like a trivial thing but they’re also a way to move beyond the University community or The Cavalier Daily and broaden our understanding of issues and arguments.
Christopher Broom is the public editor for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at publiceditor@cavalierdaily.com or on Twitter at @cdpubliceditor.
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