Though most are not inclined to admit it, campus journalists lost a valuable colleague when senior Brian Finkelstein dismantled the rumorsdaily website yesterday, ending a two-and-a-half year experiment that fundamentally changed the campus media. But in its last months in existence, the Rumors forum - a discussion board that fostered a crude campus dialogue - came to overshadow the website's original mission.
Frustrated with the quality of the discussion threads, Finkelstein decided to end his experiment. And though Tufts is a better place without the forum, there was no reason he could not have continued to investigate, post, and update the rumors on Rumors Daily.
Tufts' version of The Drudge Report began as a parody of The Tufts Daily. The website - launched on the Tufts network then moved to a private domain - was modeled after www.tuftsdaily.com, and inaugural rumors reported the happenings of Daily staff meetings.
But Finkelstein's site quickly transformed from a joke to a legitimate competitor. Student reporters saw their breaking news stories usurped by the enigmatic webmaster, posted on the Rumors Page before they ever found their way to print. He was everywhere and nowhere, spotted occasionally lurking near the Senate office, but otherwise largely out of the public eye. A network of spies, it seems, supplied him ample content for what he called his "mini underground news site." It was eNews before there was an eNews, including multimedia links to national news outlets that reported on Tufts. In the beginning, he published multiple rumors nearly everyday.
Often, to the joy of Daily, Observer, and Source writers, Finkelstein got stories wrong. And though he preceded postings with qualifiers warning of the uncertainty of gossip, the campus media regained its sense of superiority with each false rumor he published. Tufts' "real" reporters looked down at their challenger; they said he wasn't a journalist; they said his rumors were always false. But they also said - in whispers and subtle gestures - that they must change the pace of their reporting. News isn't news for long and Daily editors found themselves juggling the desire to beat the Rumors Page while working to produce fair and accurate stories. The Observer/Daily competition subsided and was replaced by a race against a news outlet that moved with the speed of the Internet and never slowed for the blinking light that journalists call "fact checking."
Then Finkelstein made a mistake that ultimately led to the demise of his innovative creation; he started a forum through which cowardly students could spew racist rhetoric and opinions of campus politicians too hurtful and insidious for a Daily Viewpoint or Observer Observation. And it caught on. Finkelstein - part egoist, part admirable First Amendment defender - tried hard not to censor discussions which should not have begun in the first place. When things got out of hand and tempers flared, he unfortunately was slow to act.
In his farewell manifesto, Finkelstein says he had the best intentions when he opened the forum and that the first participants engaged in academic debate about pertinent campus issues. But from the start, it was clear that the anonymous discussion board brought out the worst of Tufts students. Although for some people at Tufts it was educational to learn that these perspectives exist, the forum was not a constructive mechanism to face those distasteful realties. Rather then retreat, Finkelstein retrenched. And as the forum and resulting controversies grew, he seemed to pay less attention to the Rumors Page. The flow of news stories, both true and untrue, dwindled. Even in Rumors Daily's first posthumous posting, almost all of the nearly 2,600-word resignation letter refers to the forum, largely ignoring the end of the rumor era.
If no one takes over the rumors section of Rumors Daily, it will be a loss to a schizophrenic campus media that secretly enjoyed the unwelcome and uncomfortable sense of immediacy that Finkelstein once thrust upon us.
