Hatchet Crime Log: Underappreciated

We here at GW blogspot endeavor to keep the mainstream campus press (i.e. The Hatchet) in check, but we also give credit where credit is due.

I want to take a moment to say how much I love your crime log. Its awesome.... the first thing (sometimes the only thing) I read each week.

Its actually trashy gossip in a sense, but if there anything we've learned from the media at large lately, its that trash sells (and I for one am buying). While going through it weekly I do my best to put names, places and rumors together in hopes of figuring out if I know the guys who were throwing water balloons out their dorm window, the UPD officers that worked the Tonic champaign caper, or what couple was charged with lewd acts in a car on campus...

But its always such a bummer to get to the last line and read "The subjects were not affiliated with the University" (as was the case with the backseat romantics).

Kudos Amy D'Onofrio. Thanks for keeping us all informed about the often comedic actions of UPD, homeless folks, those pesky "unaffiliated" individuals and of course my friends and neighbors. Can you add a few more details in the future? Perhaps some pictures? Names? just kidding about the last one... well, kinda...

Suggestion: do an end of year 'best of the crime log' article. If you don't I just may.

DISCLAIMER: I realize the crime log also serves as an important public service and also don't mean to diminish any of the serious incidents that are reported.

Updated: fixed typo in title...

In praise of The Hatchet?! Yes.

Note: The opinions expressed in this post are those of the writer, and are not necessarily those of GWBlogSpot.

In the three months since I've been posting at GWBlogSpot, I've seen a lot of great posts that are both insightful and interesting - for example, Max's posts on the GW Housing Department, James's in-depth coverage behind the scenes of Karl Rove's visit to campus, and even a post on EBK's reaction to winning The Hatchet's April Fool's edition bracket.

I've also seen a number of posts critiquing The Hatchet's coverage (one of which is linked above), which is all fine and good, as are the anonymous comments in support of The Hatchet (perhaps staffers for the paper?).

But based on these comments, and comments from other blogs and people I've talked to, it seems that GWBlogSpot has picked up a reputation for being a Hatchet-bashing blog, which, in my opinion, couldn't be farther from the truth.

Yes, we frequently talk about The Hatchet, and yes, we frequently point out its perceived flaws, but no, we do not (or at least I do not) pick fights with The Hatchet for the sake of picking fights. And to prove that we/I don't solely hate The Hatchet, I'm going to the other side.

That's right: I'm going to write a post in praise of The Hatchet's coverage.

Specifically, the other day I came across The Hatchet's News Blog's live blogging posting on the Papal Mass at Nationals Stadium from last week. Although I question the necessity of doing the post as a live blog, given the fact that coverage started at 6 a.m., it is still very interesting to read about what went on "behind the scenes" before the mass. Reporter Andrew Ramonas's ability to connect the mass back to GW by talking about Brand Kroeger and Sergio Gor was also a great aspect of the post. I also appreciated the decision not to live blog during the Papal Mass, which (although its kind of a given that one wouldn't blog throughout a church service, let alone a Papal Mass), I still thought was respectful.

So thanks to The Hatchet for their insightful coverage. And for the regular GWBlogSpot readers, don't worry, I'll be back to critiquing The Hatchet next week. ;-)

We students is dumb?

My friend Alicia wrote on my Facebook wall today:

I sincerely hope there will be some sort of GW blogspot entry about the "GW has less intelligent students" hatchet story. Worst. Headline. Ever.

I couldn't agree more. While the headline is actually "Intelligent students decrease," problems still remain:

1. The headline does not tell anything about the story - the headline has nothing to do with the decline of National Merit students at GW or the allocation of scholarships and resources for more advanced students, which is what the story is about.

2. The headline is misleading - fewer National Merit students doesn't mean fewer intelligent students. As one professor once put it in one of my classes, having an advanced degree doesn't necessarily mean you're smarter than someone who doesn't. The same principle applies - quantifying the "intelligence" of a college student by a test is inaccurate and, well, unintelligent.

3. The headline paints GW in a bad light - while I know it isn't The Hatchet's job to defend the school, and while I recognize the subject was a necessary and important one to cover, is that really the headline we want prospective students to see when they come for April visits?

Granted, this is all a matter of semantics. But still, perhaps a better choice of words would have been, "Fewer National Merit students coming to GW," or "Does GW value smart students?" Both of these address the topic of the article, and are truthful, without making it seem that GW students are growing stupider by the year.

PS - Alicia, who suggested I blog about this, is studying abroad in Prague, which just goes to show how these perceptions and critiques don't stop at the boundaries of campus.

EXCLUSIVE UPDATE - GW Student Arrested at HellWell: "The Hatchet twisted my words and conveniently omitted information"

On Thursday, The Hatchet featured a story about Jennifer Sales, a GW student who was arrested after entering HellWell without her GWorld, then calling MPD when UPD tried to detain her.

While several other GWBlogSpot bloggers wrote about aspects of this story, including a critique of the article's placement in The Hatchet, a critique of the article itself and two examinations of the story as a whole, I e-mailed Ms. Sales to get her side of the story, and find out exactly went on. Was she happy with how her side of the story was told? Did The Hatchet do a good job of exposing the facts?

According to the following response e-mail from Ms. Sales, the answers are "No" and "No":

Hey Andrew-

In fear of retribution, I cannot say much. The Hatchet twisted my words and conveniently omitted information. "Student-run paper" i don't think so. I called MPD for a valid reason- i'm not a rebel without a cause.

I asked Ms. Sales to elaborate on her criticisms of The Hatchet, and why exactly she called MPD. I got the following e-mail in response:

retribution from SJS- I just got a judicial letter saying I may be expelled.

Although she doesn't mention specifically what the omitted information was, it's pretty clear that Ms. Sales is unhappy with The Hatchet's coverage. Given Hatchet editor in chief Jake Sherman essentially saying that he thinks The Hatchet did all they could to provide the facts, despite the fact that Sarah and I got additional information, and given the strong student interest that this story seems to be generating:

POLL QUESTION:

~ flexiPoll: free online web poll ~

What's the deal with the arrests at HellWell? Don't ask the Hatchet.

While David and Basil already covered the basics of the student who got arrested for sneaking into HellWell, I had a bigger problem with the story: namely, it wasn't big enough.

The crime log on the opposite page took up more space, for crying out loud. And really, the story reads like an extended crime log piece: girl tries to get in, can't, gets arrested. There's no discussion of whether this has happened before -- is HellWell being overrun by people sneaking in? What happens if I leave my Gworld in the lockers downstairs, but go outside to take a phone call and then try to get back inside? Is there a new crackdown on security taking place? Have students complained of a lack of rule enforcement? (Since spring break, I've noticed staff being especially vigilant about the "show your Gworld to staff" rule, which has been in place but was never really enforced.) I have no idea if this is just an isolated incident of a girl breaking the rules, or a new crackdown, or what. And I certainly couldn't find anything out by reading the Hatchet.

If the story was only highlighted because someone decided it was a slow news week (which, guys? Since you had an April Fool's issue on Monday, you have to cover a week's worth of news; this is the best you could do?), then what is it doing on page 3? And why is page 3 almost completely covered in ads? Was there really no other news for seven days? I mean, if nothing else, I'm sure someone spoke at the SMPA and there was probably free food involved.

In fact, in this week's paper, the three of the five inside news pages are ENTIRELY dominated by ads. That's unacceptable. Although ads pay for the Hatchet to be printed, they can't be the most content you see for the first half of the paper. The pages with the most news -- 9 and 10 -- are content-heavy, while pages three and five barely have a quarter-page of news. How the hell is that engaging to a reader? The appalling lack of news judgment here makes me think the Hatchet cares more about making its advertisers happy than it does telling its readers what's going on in their world.

When I picked up the paper on Thursday, I thought "oh, this is a pretty heavy paper. I bet there's a lot of interesting stuff going on." Now, my mom was a journalist and I will read anything that's put in front of me, but I don't normally read a paper cover-to-cover. So when I saw that the first two inside pages of the Hatchet were over half ads, I skipped to the crossword. I didn't even realize there were more news pages until I went looking through the paper just now. When a newspaper's layout is bad enough that I don't want to go looking for stories, something has gone terribly wrong. Congratulations, Hatchet: you've defeated me. I can no longer figure out what the hell you guys are trying to do, but it's certainly not trying to bring news to campus.

(If I sound a little righteous here, it's because I really, really love good journalism. And this isn't it.)

Website Problems for The School of Media and Public Affairs

Although it may not be the most timely of topics, I've been meaning to write about the School of Media and Public Affairs website for awhile. My thoughts?

It's awful.

Since before I even applied to the Political Communication program, I've been disappointed by the school's website, given that most students who are seeking information about the SMPA will go to it for information. This disappointment has only grown after I've taken SMPA classes and seen not only that the SMPA is a proponent of new media and effective media strategies. Judging from the website, it seems that the school couldn't care less about the use of the internet in media, which is far from true.

My chief complaints:

a) It lacks coherent organization structure - when I was first applying to the political communication program, I had to click through four or five links until I found the application and information I was looking for. In many other instances on the website, information about the school and programs was hard to come by.

b) It casts a negative impression of the school - by this, I mean that for many potential students, this website is the first experience they have with the program. What does it say to those students when the website of a school based around effective media looks like articles thrown onto a webpage?

d) It's just plain ugly - at first glace, it comes off looking like a Geocities webpage template from the late 1990s.

It's amazing that the SMPA doesn't understand the importance of a good website. Perhaps they would be well served talking to creators of the University of Maryland's Communications Department website, which looks how the SMPA's website should - that effort was put into it. Then, they should sit down with their web designer and begin planning a new website that shows they practice what they preach - that the internet is a powerful outreach tool that, when used with some effort, can be truly beneficial to the SMPA.

Two positives and a negative: The Hatchet's SA Election Blogging

I think it was from an episode of "Family Guy" that I learned to criticize by starting out with a positive comment, then a negative, and then finish with a positive comment.

It’s in that spirit that I analyze The Hatchet’s news blog this week.

First, the positive: the Hatchet’s election night coverage on their news blog was comprehensive, informative and timely.

Now, the criticism: In the blog post detailing the timeline about the election results, Hatchet reporter and blogger Andrew Ramonas included such postings as:

11:16 p.m. Tim Miller was just seen throwing a football across the ballroom with
SA executive vice president Brand Kroeger.

11:17 p.m. EVP candidate Kyle Boyer throws the football to Kroeger, who returns the football to Chris Rotella. Rotalla then hits an innocent bystander. “Stop throwing the
football,” Miller said over the microphone. (You’ll note that he started it a few moments ago.)

11:32 p.m. Presidential candidate Tarek Al-Hariri is asking about hanging chads. We sense a court case.

11:42 p.m. “Ben Balter is a sex God” did not win, according to the chair. He’s going over the rules, and here are the results…

Admittedly, it can be difficult to maintain a solid, serious dailogue when there's nothing going on. Ramonas acknowledges this in one of his blog entries:

11:31 p.m. This live-blog might seem like watching an ice cube melt in the freezer. Obviously there’s not a lot going on, and we can only offer so much anecdotal commentary. Last year, with the read-out of every ballot, there was a lot more to go on.

Plus, as I mentioned in my blog post two weeks ago, I'm all for people not taking Student Association elections so seriously. But, in my opinion, these "funny" comments were somewhat out of place.

Finally, another positive to round it out: the blog’s coverage of the fire department’s response to smoke at the President apartment building is exactly what the blog should be for – covering goings-on around campus that aren’t crucial enough or timely enough to be in The Hatchet, but have people wondering, “What was that all about?”

I encourage everyone who reads this (and anyone who has an opinion about campus-wide media, good or bad) to write to The Hatchet, post about it on a blog, or even discuss it amongst your friends.

Inside The Hatchet - What Makes a Front Page

In an apparent attempt to connect more GW students to school news via the internet, The Hatchet has a new series of blogs covering everything from the school's sports teams to students studying abroad.

Perhaps the most interesting of their six new blogs is 2140 G: Inside The Hatchet, which, according to the paper's web description, gives students "a glimpse into the inner workings of one of the best college newspapers in the nation."

Already, The Hatchet's staff is making good on this blog's promise. In a post from yesterday, editor in chief Jake Sherman explains the process for selecting cover stories, using the Jan. 31 edition of The Hatchet as an example:

At about 6 p.m. each Wednesday night, we have our front-page meeting. Jess Calefati (senior news editor), one photo editor, our production staff and I meet to discuss which stories are worthy of the newspaper’s prime real estate. By that time, I have hopefully read all the stories, placed them down on our server and we can have a discussion about newsworthiness of each piece.

Each of us comes with ideas about stories, the production folks visualize layout and photo staff let us know about art.

It seems to be a reasonable and fair way to decide on the front page of the paper. But, as Sherman continues, we find out that the plan can be overruled:

After the front and inside pages were largely done, I got word from Joanna Shapes and Ben Solomon at Smith Center that they thought the men’s basketball game was front-page worthy. So we had to bump the GW Votes to the inside pages. Joanna had a nice narrative of the game so at
about 10:30, we switched the front page.

While some have raised the issue of the newsworthiness of a basketball game, as one student did in a letter to the editor published in yesterday's Hatchet, I question how the spur-of-the-moment opinion of one or two staff members can outweigh an entire meeting's worth of planning. Is this a process that the Hatchet regularly uses? Has there ever been a disagreement over this practice? Does it require more work to redesign the front page because of two opinions? Is this the best way of presenting news to the students?

I hope that Jake Sherman and the other Hatchet staff will continue to talk about this issue and answer these questions in future blog posts. Until then, I hope The Hatchet continues to reveal the inner workings of the paper and how news is covered and reported at GW.

And we begin...

On January 28, 2008, a new blog was born...dedicated to political analysis and media critique on the campus of George Washington University.

Update (January 29, 2008): Video of the official ribbon-cutting: