To the editor:
I understand that we don't have an bustling campus, especially during the cold months of October through April. That said, could you please write some articles with content?
In the Monday March 7 issue, your main headline was about lessons learned from Flight 3407 in the two years and change since the crash. This was a terrible tragedy and surely deserves some attention, but should it be above the fold on a date other than the anniversary when there's no new major revelations? More importantly, shouldn't the headline represent the contents of the article? As I'm sure many students noted as they read through the article, it was a story about a professor's article about emergency mental health which used Flight 3407 as a case study. This entire topic is fascinating and it is exciting to know we have a professor with an article being published, but is there nothing else happening that could bump this back to page 2 where it could exist alongside the other pieces about articles written by professors?
Moving down the front page, it appears that there is some big news on campus: a picture of protestors with a megaphone! Now certainly this must be topical and of direct importance to the general student populace, but it is just a piece from eight years ago. On the front page.
So if one were to assume that the editors of The Spectrum subscribe to the idea of leading with your biggest stories, this does not bode well for the rest of the paper. In fact, the tease at the bottom of the page promises: an editorial piece about Burqas in France, album reviews which will disappoint, and ballet. None of these teases are bad in and of themselves, the problem is delivery, particularly in the first case.
Burqas in France have been a hot button issue for years, but no major new developments have occured over the past few months. Bringing an issue up that hasn't received attention for an extended period of time is a tricky prospect. You could take a risky position and face hate mail, you could have someone with first-hand experience discuss their feelings from a new perspective, or you could restate what so many others said when the topic was relevant and risk a rambling letter to the editor.
It's no secret that the opinion pieces have been getting out of hand lately. Maybe it's a side effect of blogs that makes people think that strangers care about what they have to say about issues and non-issues, even if they are just saying they don't have anything to say. Maybe it's the need to fill empty pages because nothing at all is happening on a campus of nearly 30,000 students (I'm not an investigative journalist, so I can't speak to the idea that there is something happening). But one thing I do know is we have a very diverse student body with diverse backgrounds, opinions, and viewpoints. So even if there is nothing happening on campus, there is bound to be at least one student on campus with insight into a current event elsewhere in the world.
That said, maybe The Spectrum will look at the possibility of creating more content that doesn't fall into the trappings of personal manifestos that clog "Page 3", or maybe it will continue down the same roads. I'm sure many of us loyal readers will continue picking up your newspaper no matter what. I am merely offering a few reader suggestions. And best of luck to the new editor in chief, Matthew Parrino. I am glad to see that you are trying something new by promoting the sports editor and look forward to see his changes to the paper.
Jon Gerlach
Undergraduate
Civil Engineering, 201
