Leavey421 - The Newsroom

Covering a Tragedy

Hello everyone,

To start, I would just like to first introduce myself. My name’s Andrew Dwulet, and I’m the campus news editor for the Fall 2008 term at The Hoya. This is the first of many blog posts this semester.

This past week, I have been part of the reporting and editorial team that has led and coordinated coverage of the tragedy involving Terrance Davis (COL ’10), who last Monday went missing in South Africa after being carried out to sea by a freak wave and has since then been presumed drowned by authorities in the country. It has been as intense and hectic a week on our side as I can remember in my one and a half years on the paper’s news staff, involving calls in the middle of the night to South African sea rescue teams, the South African university where Terrance was studying and Georgetown authorities both here and abroad. And the whole process I am just glossing over here has truly been a “team effort,” trite as it might sound, to the fullest extent of the expression.

One of the primary reasons that current Editor in Chief Bailey Heaps and others decided to start this blog was to give our readers a bit of a window into to the difficult stories we sometimes cover and the fundamentally difficult decisions that usually accompany them. For me, nothing I have ever done in journalism can compare to the challenges I faced this week. As one of our fellow editors described it, our profession can be weird, even “twisted,” at times because, in the darkest hours, we must enter into the fray and challenge ourselves to rise up above our feelings and the obstacles confronting us in order to fulfill our responsibilities. It is in these most pressing times that we, as journalists, are almost forced to push ourselves to new heights and meet a standard of journalism that we might have previously thought unattainable. Part of me feels this rings quite true this past week. I have been proud to work with my fellow editors who stayed up late nights with me, made the impossibly difficult calls to Terrance’s family, and constantly demonstrated in their writing and in their action an unbelievable mixture of professionalism and compassion.

In spending the many hours that we have this week on continuous coverage of this tragedy, it is almost easy at times to get caught up in story, the interviews, and the craziness that comes with it. But, when the story is finally done and it’s 3 a.m., the magnitude of this really hit me. I cannot even imagine what this has been like for Terrance’s family and friends, and, in moments like these, the only words I can think of that can even come close to adequate are the ones that have been echoed by the hundreds and thousands of members of the Georgetown community this past week: the sadness and sorrow has hit each and everyone of us, and we are ready to offer all the support that can be offered. I truly do hope our coverage has been compatible with this because, I assure you, at one point or another during all of this, we have been absolutely consumed by this. Anyone who says that feelings cannot enter or be a part of journalism has not been a part of something like this.

The difficult decisions that we made are not ones that we will turn our back on, nor are they ones that we will isolate from public scrutiny. Attempting to contact Terrance’s family so soon after the report was complicated in itself, but we tried at least to follow and adhere to the most basic principle in which we seek out every voice and do nothing that could leave out vital information. Our inability to make immediate contact with the American Consulate in Cape Town further reinforced this. In our diction and in the way we framed our story, we sought to combine the voices of those whom this most deeply and most immediately affected, Terrance’s many friends at Georgetown, together with an objective and admittedly limited account of what happened from the National Sea Rescue Institute.

I would be more than happy to hear feedback or read comments about ways in which you think we could have done better in our coverage. Certainly, there is nothing in journalism, and particularly in coverage of this sort, that is perfect. Where we can do better – we will do better.  

 – Andrew 

Verbal Harrasment Story

Greetings, readers.

The Hoya posted on the Web yesterday a story outlining an alleged bias-related incident last weekend in Burleith.  Attempts to contact the alleged assailants were futile, so the story relied mostly on the Metropolitan Police Department report, as well as an interview with the victim.

A reader on our Web site remarked that, “I for one am sure glad that The Hoya decided to protect the name of the alleged victim for “sensitivity’s” sake when it was so flippant in falsely identifying Phil Cooney as perpetrator of last year’s incident.”  Our disclosure of Cooney’s identity last year was the subject of much debate on our Web site and in our pages, and it is a debate that is both valid and important.

A few points on why I believe the comparison between this incident and that are unfounded:

(1) Cooney was the alleged perpetrator of a hate crime, not the alleged victim.  To be sure, he was only a suspect and he had not been proven guilty.  He was presumed innocent.  He does not deserve to have his reputation tarnished unfairly.  Still, the standards for anonymity for victims and suspects are different.  When it comes to the victims of potentially bias- or hate-motivated incidents, our paper, like most, is very sensitive about divulging their identity.

(2) It is important to note that Cooney’s name was mentioned in the arrest warrant.  Because his identity was a matter of public record, The Hoya felt comfortable including his name in reports.  Had his name not been released by authorities, the decision-making process regarding the use of his name would have been entirely different.

In this case, because The Hoya could not independently confirm anything about the identity of the suspects, it refrained from including any personally-identifiable information.

Also on the record:

DPS release

Georgetown Voice

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these issues and anything relating to our coverage.  Have a great weekend.

Bailey Heaps

Editor in Chief

Welcome Back

Welcome back!

Hope everyone had a good summer and is ready for another year on the Hilltop. With upperclassmen beginning to return to campus and the first few freshmen beginning to trickle in (with a much larger group set to arrive today), the Hilltop is beginning to buzz again.

This summer at Georgetown was not necessarily defined by one huge story, but several smaller things took place. The university hired a new director for the Department of Public Safety, as well as leaders for the women’s center and newly-created LGBTQ Resource Center. The new business building is taking shape, and village A received some improvements this summer aimed at improving safety. Roy Hibbert (COL ‘08) and Patrick Ewing (COL ‘08) were selected in the NBA draft (Pacers and Sixers, respectively; Ewing has since been dealt to the Rockets), and Andrew Campbell made his Olympic sailing debut.

The Hoya covered some of these stories this summer, but now that the school year is upon is, we will be following everything much more closely. Much of the work done by the newspaper this summer was behind the scenes; each section of the paper has big plans for the coming year, and hopefully those will begin to show themselves to all of you soon.

Production of our first regular issue of the year is coming to a close as I write this post.  My hope is that much of the content in this first issue gets you all up to speed on what’s taken place since last spring.  Please leave comments on our stories; we want to hear what you have to say.

For subsequent issues, I’ll try to offer my reflections on and pose a question relating to a story or stories in the issue. For now, I’ll ask this question: What is the area in which you would like to see The Hoya improve the most between now and May? Is it depth of our news coverage? Investigative features? Football coverage? Whatever you’ve got, throw it out there.

Thanks for reading.

Bailey Heaps

Editor in Chief

GU Student Journalists Honored

Each year, the university honors its student journalists by holding an awards ceremony where they recognize the three best pieces in six different categories. The Hoya, The Voice, The Independent and The Fire This Time can submit six entries in news, features, sports, commentary, review and photography. Then, the university recruits a panel of local journalists to read the submissions and pick the winners. Typically, the awards are pretty evenly spread around. This year, The Hoya and The Voice split all 18 prizes. Here are some of the winners — they’re all pretty good.

News:
1st Place: The Hoya, Family, Friends Mourn Death of Active Former Student
2nd: The Voice, Alcohol Policy Stifles Student Social Life
3rd: The Voice, GUSA, Corp support Hoya Independence
Features:
1st Place: The Hoya, Coaching a Different Game of Hoya Hoops
2nd Place: The Hoya, Without A Home, But Not Without A Voice
3rd Place: The Voice, Georgetown’s Secret Report Card

Sports:
1st Place: The Hoya, Georgetown’s Ivy League Education
2nd Place: The Hoya, A Coach and A Player
3rd Place: The Voice, Finding a future in football

Commentary:
1st: The Voice, The Necessity of Idealism
2nd: The Hoya, True Love Comes With a Lasting Loving Sole
3rd: The Voice, Sippin’ on Jin ‘n’ Juice

Review:
1st: The Voice, Decaying Photos
2nd: The Voice, Critical Voices: Mountain Goats
3rd: The Hoya, Sashimi and Beatles Hidden Beneath Bland Exterior

Photo:
1st: The Hoya, No Shirts, No Shoes, No Pants [on the Metro]
2nd: The Voice
3rd: The Hoya

Pretty good showing for both papers. I think generally speaking, The Hoya does what it does irrespective of The Voice, and The Voice does what it does irrespective of The Hoya, but it is always good to have someone down the hall giving you a little push.

If you get a second, read some of these entries. They’re all worth a read.

– Bailey Heaps

Welcome to Leavey 421

Welcome to The Hoya’s newsroom blog. Our goal here is to give you, the reader, an inside look at our newsroom. Ideally, you can get a better sense of exactly what it is we do here, and we can get a better sense what it is our readers are looking for. Myself and other editors will be posting here periodically, occasionally over the summer, but certainly more next fall.

First, a bit about myself. A New Jersey native who has lived in Massachusetts since I was 10, I’m a junior in the college majoring in government and English. I joined The Hoya the first semester of my freshman year as a sports writer. I was the senior sports editor for the 2006-07 school year and then managing editor this past fall. I was elected editor in chief two weekends ago. Near the top of my list of goals for the semester is to increase the newspaper’s accountability and transparency. Hopefully, this blog will serve as the first step to accomplishing that.

Now, a bit about some changes to the paper. If you’ve checked out our new staff list or the new masthead in the newspaper, you’ll have noticed that we’ve created a new position called executive editor. The executive editor is in charge of driving the day-to-day content that you read in the paper and coordinating the editing of stories on production nights. Filling the position is Michele Hong, the outgoing managing editor. Michele served as senior news editor last fall.

Speaking of the senior news position, it no longer exists. Senior-level positions no longer have the word “senior” in the title and news has been differentiated into distinct senior-level campus and city positions. The idea is that coverage of both areas will improve if we increase specialization a bit.

Lastly, what used to be just a “section editor” (i.e. a news editor who worked for the senior news editor or a sports editor who under for the senior sports editor) is now known as a deputy editor. Confusing, I know.

Anyway, enough about who we are.

Sunday we posted a story about the armed sexual assault that took place over the weekend (today, we update that story and run another regarding security firm Securitas and the campus reaction to the crime). In less than 48 hours, it was read thousands of times and was commented on 48 times. Some of the comments keyed on the fact that the suspect was identified as a black male. A few of them crossed the line into hateful and offensive. Comments like that have no place here. A nuanced, mature discussion, absolutely. But not hateful.

But this brings up a larger concern regarding comments. Do comments by so-called “trolls” — people who have no affiliation with Georgetown and no real knowledge of the issue — and remarks that don’t necessarily make a whole lot of sense bring down the story itself? Should they be on a separate page, where they do not receive the same standing as a fully-reported article? Or is community reaction to a story just as important as the story itself? I’m not sure. What do you think?

Elsewhere, Professor Mark Lance penned his last column of the semester last Friday and, as usual, received a wide range of reactions. In the short time that our site has employed the comment function, no one has gotten nearly the response that Lance has. Some love him, some have very negative reactions to his work, but it seems safe to say he makes people think. Still, many of the comments that his work generates steer away from his original point. How far is too far? Should the comment space be a place for readers to take discussion wherever they please, or should it stick close to the topic at hand. Again, there is no right or wrong answer. What do readers think?

Today’s issue is our last of the semester. We will have one a few weeks from now for graduation, and when news breaks during the summer, we’ll be sure to get it on our site ASAP. In the meantime, please use this forum as a space to speak up about our coverage. Or, if your not comfortable doing that, I’m happy to receive your e-mails at editor@thehoya.com.

Good luck on exams, have a great summer, and keep checking thehoya.com

– Bailey Heaps, Editor in Chief