By Matt Weir

I have a favor to ask of you: I have noticed that oftentimes readers will send e-mail directly to the writing desk they have a problem with (campus, for example) instead of me.

I highly encourage you to write to these people – I’ve already figured out that they know a lot more than me and can answer most of your questions – but please include me on these e-mails. I am working to keep track of what issues, writers, sections, etc. Daily Northwestern readers respond to most often. And sometimes readers’ questions fall through the cracks, and if I never know about them, they don’t get answered. So please include me in the conversation.

For instance, sports are barely ever covered in the public editor’s columns. I’m finding that because of The Daily’s presentation, there is a belief that The Daily is the front of the paper, and then sports – a separate entity – is on the back. Therefore, the Forum section rarely receives letters to the editor about sports. And the public editor is almost never alerted to reader concerns about sports because readers respond directly to the sports editor.

The sports editor this quarter is David Kalan, a Weinberg senior. I interviewed him about a letter I received about sports coverage. It was written by Emma Kronick, a Weinberg junior. It read, in part: “A weekly column on either club sports or intramurals news, perhaps on the inside of the back page, is a needed addition to The Daily … From a human interest perspective, the stories of setbacks, challenges, teamwork and perseverance resonate more with the general population than similar stories about varsity athletes, whose motives and circumstance are more foreign to the average student. Raising awareness about opportunities at the club level would increase participation rates and draw the interest of future students.”

This was Kalan’s response: “It all depends on the abundance of staff and space. Space is the biggest problem. Right now it’s our policy not to cover club sports because of it. There are varsity sports, for example, that are happening this weekend that I won’t have coverage on.

“It’s hard enough to find staffers to cover stories. This past Friday we had 11 stories across 9 sports. It’s hard to find writers to cover sports like women’s fencing, men’s wrestling and tennis.” (All of those sports mentioned compete at the varsity level.)

Kalan said other factors contribute to why the sports desk cannot cover the number of varsity sports at the level they would like. “For women’s fencing, for instance, it’s hard to get people to write for it. It’s not considered a sexy sport to write about,” Kalan said. “Also, they compete in Patten Gym, which has bad lighting for pictures. So we don’t run art on it, which in turn lowers awareness of the sport and someone’s desire to cover it.”

So if Northwestern-affiliated athletes cannot get coverage, Kalan feels it’s hard to give the space to club sports. Kalan also said that because club athletes are not official representatives of their university in athletics, they are student organizations and qualify to be covered in the campus section instead.

For instance, on March 31, 2006, the campus section ran a story (“Crew boats wrecked in accident; team competes in loaned vessels”) about NU’s crew team (a club sport) after its boats were destroyed in a trailer accident before a meet. The sports desk then heard from other club sports looking for coverage. But it doesn’t have the space, Kalan said.

Kalan said he’s trying hard enough to get varsity sports full coverage. He mapped out “precedes” (previews) and “recaps” (reports) for all varsity sports this quarter on a huge calendar.

The campus section tries to cover it, if it’s big enough. But that can be a tough call. “It’s hard to say it without sounding mean,” said Tommy Giglio, The Daily’s photo editor. “But it’s hard to cover something not a lot of people care about. A lot of student groups don’t get coverage.”

Public Editor Matt Weir serves as the readers’ representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. He can be reached at [email protected].