The last year has been an incredible one for The Spectrum - and I'm not talking about how awesome I think the paper is becoming. Although if you have to know, I think this is quite possibly the greatest paper in the planet. But I might be a little biased.
And there's the problem - I love this paper. So in the last year, as The Spectrum has been making headlines both on campus and off, we've had to deal with a situation no journalism class could really prepare us for. I'm talking about the problem of reporting on a situation in which a newspaper is involved.
The Spectrum has been more than a provider of news over the last year. Our newspaper has been part of it, from our short-lived plunge into a "reality" style dating series, to our attempt to save the paper from debt through a referendum - not to mention the court battles after that endeavor - to last week's news about changed media policies on campus. And no, I'm not going to take up space griping about a policy I can't change (although feel free to ask me about it if you see me. I'd bet money my reaction would be different, and much less heated, than you would expect).
See, our lil' ol' paper graced the pages of The Buffalo News a few times last year, not to mention was the spotlight of both Generations and Visions. That's something I wasn't prepared for - I wasn't prepared to write articles about The Spectrum. We're here to cover the campus news, not the campus newspaper.
So what happens when your news source becomes the news itself?
The ignorant answer would be not to cover events in which we are involved. But that cheats the UB community, who deserve to know when things are happening on campus, regardless of whether they involve the newspaper or not.
The novice answer would be to cover it like anything else - to conduct interviews and write a well thought out piece. Well, you can't. Normally, sitting down to write an article after a series of interviews is one of the joys of my life - if you were wondering, I might be one of the least cool individuals at this university - but covering the newspaper you work for is torture. Slow, agonizing torture, like someone pulling off your toenails with rusty tweezers.
The only answer I have to this (being far from an "expert" on the issue, but having dealt with the topic for about a year) is to scrutinize every word the newspaper puts in print.
No matter what you say, and how benignly you say it, someone will read a hidden agenda into your words. A sentence is no longer a sentence. It's suddenly a mystic puzzle the population thinks it's unlocking - some journalistic riddle of the Sphinx. Suddenly every verb is too definitive and every adjective seems too descriptive. You proofread your work and mull over the smallest phrase, afraid someone will read it as opinion.
In any normal article, we check for balance, to make sure one side of an issue is not too heavily covered. In an article about our newspaper, this goes beyond checking for balance to a new level in the search for equilibrium. Even if the reporter feels the piece has both sides accurately represented, it's not enough. In covering ourselves, we tip-toe through the minefield of objectivity, to the point where we often worry that we are favoring our opposing side.
Out of courtesy, we try not to run a story that involves our newspaper with too much prominence. For those not fluent in newspaper-speak, that means we try to put the story at the bottom of the page, if on the front page at all.
It's a slippery slope, but it's probably one of the greatest tools from which The Spectrum can learn. It's made me realize how confining language can be and that balance and objectivity in any article is something we should never stop striving for. If the slightest word change could make us look biased in reporting on our newspaper, it could as easily tip the scales on any other story.
Last year, some of you may remember, The Spectrum contacted an editor from The Brown Daily Herald to write all the stories relating to The Spectrum's battles in court. He was more than gracious and, while it pains me, Erin "State School" Shultz, to credit an Ivy Leaguer, he was very talented and thorough. But The Spectrum is running fresh out of do-gooders in the journalism community to write stories for us.
So we do it ourselves. We scrutinize what we print. Generally, I give myself an ulcer prior to going to press. But we stay committed to accurately representing a situation.
Probably the greatest thing to come out of a year in which we were the focus of so much coverage was the actual practice of writing about the paper that we serve. Experiences like this - as gut wrenching and difficult as they may be for us - are ones that could never come out of a journalism course or interviewing textbook.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
