Andrew Golis

The Crimson doesn’t report on the UC very much, just the obvious events, no process stories, more insightful explorations of the dynamics or anything like that. Because of that, students don’t really know very much about the UC. Because they don’t know very much about it, they don’t care about it very much. Because they don’t care about it very much, the Crimson is justified in not writing very much about it.

It’s a tough catch-22. Because of it, the Crimson’s coverage is event-based and boring: “Frank said this, they voted. Jane said that, Frank disagreed.” It’s purely reactionary, and written after the fact. Other than the op-eds, there’s never news like “They’re going to look at this, this is where the support for this bill stands at this point, there’s tension between these two people” etc. Granted, that would require actual reporting that might include work and investigation.

Of course, everyone wants more Crimson coverage for their thing. Talking to friends of mine who now run the Crimson, this is what I always hear: “if we write more about the UC we won’t have space for other things, and we need to have a variety of subjects for different audiences and interests.”

ummm… how do I say this nicely? That’s complete bullshit.

First of all, it’s not a zero-sum game. Take today’s paper for instance: there was an 8.5 by 9 inch picture on the front page of the provost making espresso. While I am quite impressed at his daily espresso intake, I’m not sure I needed a near life-size picture of him doing it. The prioritization of space is fundamental, and I know it’s something that the Crimson debates and struggles with. Even so, everyday, whether its in huge pictures, stories about chickwhichs, etc., there’s somewhere you could fit another story if you cared.

Second of all, to claim that campus politics should simply be another area of interest for popular consumption is a complete misunderstanding of the Crimson’s responsibility to its readers and its community. Like it or not, the UC is our community government. It’s the only organization that can be said to represent the whole student body. Whether it does that well is up for debate (although I’m guessing it’ll be done better this year than ever before ), but that’s the beauty of democracy. It is the Crimson’s responsibility to take part in that Democratic system, to vigorously inform voters, to question leaders, to paint a picture for the community of what it’s politics looks like. This last point is important: media’s responsibility is to make sense of politics for us. It’s their job to dig deep and figure out what’s going on, who’s doing what and why, what may happen in the future. How can a community be engaged in its own politics without knowing what’s going to happen as its happening, without having a sense of the bigger picture, the important players, the tensions and pressures? UC people can’t do this for themselves: their efforts to raise their own profile are inherently viewed with skepticism because of factors of self-promotion and spin.

The Crimson’s perspective on its role in the community mirrors exactly what’s ruining media in America today. It used to be, at the high-brow levels anyway, that those in the media believed themselves as much a part of the politics of a community as politicians. They believed that they had a responsibility to the community to shape its politics and make it as honest, open and effective as possible, regardless of ideology. Now, whether in cable news or popular print news, there is a belief that news should simply mirror the interests of its readers, whatever those might be. This belief leads well-meaning and talented reporters to run stories that it knows don’t actually include any reporting or that are essentially not even news.

So, will the Crimson fulfill its responsibility to its community by helping to engage the community in its politics or will it keep running stories on chickwhichs?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 4th, 2005 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.