Students are up in arms this week about the Lagoon construction plan, and rightly so. For starters, we’re peeved that yet another campus beauty spot – this time the duck-frequented bridge along the western edge of the water – is about to be destroyed. And we have a bigger complaint: that the administration didn’t ask our opinion and waited until three weeks before construction is slated to begin before revealing its plan.

But we shouldn’t have had to wait for the administration. Northwestern has an independent student newspaper, charged with finding the truth and reporting it to the campus community. So it might surprise you that a week before the story appeared in print, The Daily decided not to pursue leads hinting toward that truth.

The story starts innocently enough. According to reporter Marisa Maldonado, a man refusing to give his name called the newsroom on Jan. 29 to tell her about a plan to pave over part of the Lagoon and build a parking lot. It sounded absurd, and when administrators didn’t return calls on the matter for the rest of the day, the paper just laughed it off.

They didn’t know that Associated Student Government President Jordan Heinz had heard rumors about the project at least a year before, and anyway, the whole thing just didn’t make sense. Pave over the Lagoon? You might as well raze University Hall.

So the rumor sat, and The Daily went back to reporting on subjects that actually had sources and some basis in reality.

But two days later, on Jan. 31, the anonymous man walked into the newsroom and demanded to know why the paper ignored his tip, Maldonado said. He dropped the name of a woman who had participated in planning meetings and could be able to confirm his story. Maldonado made a call, confirmed the story with this second Deep Throat and then went on to the next step: calling people with names.

But those names – Bienen, Sunshine and others – belonged to people who weren’t calling back and couldn’t be reached for comment. So Maldonado said she put in another call, this time to Vice President of External Relations Alan Cubbage. He was in, and he was talking. But what Cubbage said was curious: He told Maldonado to ask Casey Newton, editor in chief of The Daily, about a previous conversation between the two, Maldonado said.

Nobody is willing to talk on the record about the details of that phone conversation. All we know is this: Newton and Cubbage had a conversation. That much Cubbage confirmed.

Then, according to Maldonado, “an editor told me, ‘we can’t run with this story now,'” so she stopped pursuing it.

“Pursuing” is the operative word: There was no story yet – only leads. The Daily didn’t have a front page screaming “Lagoon Doomed!” ready to roll on Feb. 1, only to have administrators kill it. It simply stopped pursuing those leads.

“The Daily published the story as soon as we had it, and we didn’t have it before Tuesday, ” Newton said, in defense of the newspaper’s actions. “We are not in the business of publishing unsubstantiated rumors.”

Six days later, the administration made its formal announcement about the Lagoon construction project. Could The Daily have substantiated those rumors earlier had it not chosen to break off pursuit? Would that extra time have made a difference to students fighting the project?

Unfortunately, the answer is: We’ll never know.