The cover story of the Nov. 9 issue of the Tufts Observer was a feature called the "Future of Health Care in America." The article was three pages long. On the table of contents, the next four stories were slugged "national" or "international," and save one article, the page numbers to the left of the titles for the rest of the issue incremented by no more than two at a time.
The Observer's new, fresh layout and clean graphics impress me. But how can any article on as broad a topic as health care make a significant contribution in three pages? And how many of us turn to a campus publication for expert commentary on national or international issues?
My concern is not over page length. Rather, I question why the Observer, the Tufts Roundtable, the Primary Source and other publications often rely heavily on issues beyond the scope of campus to fill their pages. Campus publications should stick to news on campus, or else they become just a poor Newsweek.
I understand the temptation to cover off-campus issues. They make easy editorials, there is abundant information and there is inspiration from national columnists for ideas.
The Daily often prints great stories that relate national or international issues to campus, such as its Nov. 23 article on the financial aid committee in Somerville, and I would just as quickly criticize publications that are myopic and don't see how big issues affect Tufts students. I just want to challenge campus editors to try a little harder to explore important issues at Tufts instead of jumping to off-campus issues to fill pages.
Perhaps one cause of this problem at the Observer is the size of the magazine. The page count recently increased from 24 to 32 pages, and maybe this is too much to fill on a bi-weekly basis. I know the editorial board knows more about this than I do, but it might be valuable to reduce the page count and petition for a little more student activities money to print in all color.
It is very important for student journalists to get experience covering national and international news; I just don't think the campus is the right place to do it. There are plenty of other opportunities to do this.
GlobalPost, a new international newswire based in Boston, has a study abroad program in which students can work with professional editors and get their work published online. Students file reports from all around the world: www.globalpost.com/home/study-abroad.
The Communication and Media Studies (CMS) program here at Tufts also offers winternships, short internships over winter break in cities across the United States: ase.tufts.edu/cms/winternships.html. I had a wonderful experience covering the 2008 New Hampshire primary with WBUR, Boston's NPR station, through this program.
There are other well-known internship opportunities through national publications that CMS can help with and provide credit for. But also don't forgot your local newspapers and magazines — some of the best help with reporting and writing that I've received was at my home paper, the Martha's Vineyard Times. It was fun to report in a community I knew well, see my name in print every week and develop a wonderful relationship with an editor. Home papers can be a great way to gain experience and earn money in an environment that's less competitive than a national internship program.
I've often heard comparisons made between the federal government and campus politics, or between Tufts and national media. The comparison is meaningless given the vast differences in scale and issues we deal with. We are not national organizations, and we should limit our scope to campus.
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Duncan Pickard is a senior majoring in history. He is the Public Editor of the Media Advocacy Board and his opinions are strictly his own. He can be reached at tuftspubliceditor@gmail.com or through his blog at www.tuftsroundtable.org/publiceditor.
