This is a call for help.
There are something close over 15 stories published in The Tufts Daily every single day. And each of those stories requires you, the reader, our sources, to contribute in some way. If you are a part of a sports team or its coach, if you are a professor in a department, or a student, if you work in an administrative building or rely on it, we need you to start stepping forward.
Good news and bad is out there on this campus, but its not getting through to us down here in the office. And, more often than not, that is where we are. The tragedy of running a daily paper is that we seem to spend so much time getting the next issue ready that we are pressed for time to discover stories that are not based around events: speakers, elections, crimes, and announcements.
Which means that often times, we have to rely on you. You are our lifeblood. I wrote that in a column to start off the semester, but I wander if it was really understood how important this is.
The Tufts Daily, and news organizations in general, exist to shine light on that which was in the dark. To provide information so that everyone can be as well informed of the facts as possible. Often times, errors or misleading articles are not the cause of poor reporting but the cause of those with pertinent information who felt it was not their duty to step forward.
It pains me to hear someone who has read an article to say, "The Daily really got this wrong. But I don't really care enough to bother telling them." I hate corrections more than anything else. There is nothing worse than having to type one up for the next day, an admittance that sometimes our articles are not perfect in their factual accuracy.
But I understand that that is part of the business. Reporters work as hard as they can to get every fact of the story and ensure total accuracy. But one of the problems is that not enough people are telling us the whole story.
The Daily, for better or worse, is the media organization of Tufts University. E-news, the voice of the Office of Public Relations, does a wonderful job in sharing many of the exceptional things the members of Tufts University. But it is the Daily which can push the IR Department to explain why John Jenke was fired. What the University College's funding is spent on. And today, why construction for the new music building is taking so long to begin.
But often times there are no answers forthcoming. We can only raise the questions, and after the fact, receive the answers when people read the articles and realize that their side came out poorly in the piece. Nearly every time someone gets mad at the Daily for "simply not getting it," it is because they do not help us to do so.
From time to time, the Daily office gets an e-mail or a phone call which gives us information, who feel a responsibility to make sure certain facts, whether good or bad, make it into the newspaper. But the fact that this is a rare occurrence is not a good thing.
So call us. Or when we call you up, tell us what you really think, what you really know. Ask to speak off the record if that is what you need. Explain to us what we are doing wrong, explain what the focus needs to be, show us what the problem is on campus.
This is my last week as editor-in-chief of the Daily. Next semester, Mark Evitt will have the responsibility of running the campus' only newspaper, and your help is appreciated. All of you are a part of the Tufts community, and together, we need to work to make it better -- and the Daily can be a vehicle for that. We are more receptive than you would think.
We'll be waiting.
