With every quarter comes new hope of finally fixing The Daily. This quarter Editor in Chief Robert Samuels has his own remedy: a comprehensive review.
What does this mean? You’re not alone in confusion over its definition
In the second editorial board meeting of the quarter, Samuels spelled out his plan to keep The Daily from being, in his words: “predictable.” Samuels also asked that editors of the various sections compile data on their staff, including race, gender and field of academic study.
You could feel the discomfort from many over how to go about this.
The role of a newspaper is that of a camera — capture the events how they happen. The Daily has instead become home to scorekeeping, where, as part of the comprehensive review, a daily tabulation is kept on corrections, the biological makeup on the front page, quantity and placement of Associated Student Government and city council stories and the ratio of feature to hard news stories — among other categories.
With the work just underway, it is time to ask: Is the review worthwhile?
Part of my role as public editor has been to tabulate these statistics. It has been tedious. Through doing it, one must ask if any tangible results can be achieved.
Is it journalistically ethical to attempt to gear the news to fit aspirations that might just not be possible to control?
The news is a naturally evolving thing. It is something that cannot be messed with or filtered in any way — at least in its purest form.
Are people impacted by seeing someone who looks like them on the front page?
The nature of a public editor is to be a critic and serve as something of an in-house guide to proper journalism. In this role, I am afforded an opportunity to be bluntly honest. In the case of the comprehensive review we must ask if we are actually doing a disservice to readers by attempting to shape the news in a potentially superficial manner.
Hopefully the comprehensive review can become more of a comprehensive preview. Anyone with a publication should attempt to enhance the way a paper presents coverage instead of trying to make sure coverage fulfills a minimal quota.
A Critique of The Public editor
Since the creation of the public editor position one year ago, the job has served as more of a space-filler than a substantive source of journalistic critiques.
Why?
Maybe The Daily doesn’t have it that wrong after all, or we aren’t nearly as big of a deal as we think we are.
Nonetheless, I have received e-mails from readers and letters forwarded from staff members that speak to what is my chief goal as public editor: to see all members of The Daily take equal pride in their work.
From seeing bylines lacking the “By,” a Khartoum government being called a “cartoon government,” an Evanston alderman who claims to have never had a positive experience with The Daily complaining of misrepresentations in an article and seeing editorials that appear to be nothing but 650 words of unoriginal thought — I want to see writers make an attempt to go the extra mile.
Editors and writers alike are paid a paltry sum around here, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to do less.
If anything, my strongest critique of The Daily is that I have so little I can critique. The stories are safe and standard and reporters do the minimal that is asked of them.
Can anyone change this? Readers write me explaining their beef and I do my best to answer them. Through the mass of e-mails, I wonder: Does any real, substantive change occur? It’s a question nobody can an answer.
I will not be a public relations figure for The Daily and I won’t pretend that I can transform The Daily into a well-oiled journalism machine. But I will try my hardest to finally make the public editor position matter.
Public Editor Troy Appel is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected].
