Janie Boschma

Did you see that article in The Spectator? God, that was ridiculous.

They didn’t even include blah blah blah or talk to so-and-so. They had the this-and-that all wrong and the whatchamacallit was screwed up.

Idiots.

We do our best to ensure that you, the good reader, never feel like using the above sentences. Unfortunately, sometimes the job we do just isn’t good enough.

There are countless reasons why an article in the newspaper may not accomplish what you think it should. And while we are always striving to do better, this semester we are taking some very specific steps to enrich our coverage.

Understand first that our reporters are human and, God forbid, capable of mistakes. But many of the shortcomings you may identify in an article have to do with how good our sources are. We can’t know everything, and sometimes we even know things that we simply can’t prove or get on the record.

Some people seem to think that we can write whatever we want, plucking facts out of the mix or, sometimes, making them up. The fact of the matter is, every single news report is a web of facts, each with a specific source and reason for inclusion.

Ensuring access to the people and information that make that web is a joint endeavor between us and all of you out there.

Here’s what we’re doing on our end:

After talks with the University Police Department, The Spectator will soon have regular, systematic access to every single arrest record. Though many files dealing with ongoing investigations and other matters are still sealed (and in some cases rightfully so), the paper will now be able to see the names and suspected charges of anyone university police officers arrest.

Why is this important? Rest assured, it’s not so we can needlessly shame and embarrass anyone – actually we’ve always had access to this information, it’s just that now we will have it in a more consistent and timely manner.

Our only motivation for such information is so that if something serious happens on campus we will be more effective at getting all of you the appropriate information.

We’re also initiating discussions with various other groups on campus. Some are key sources in areas of coverage that we feel we could be doing better in. Others are groups that we’d simply like a more trusting, consistent relationship with.

In fact, we could be contacting your organization soon, which leads me to my next point:

It’s not only our responsibility to make sure that we are cultivating and maintaining the relationships necessary to producing good journalism.

If you feel like an issue you care about isn’t receiving proper coverage, talk to us. You can call us, e-mail us, send a letter to the editor or comment on our Web site. Once that contact has been established, be sure to keep us posted on the latest developments.

We do our best to monitor the highpoints of campus news – student government, police, state legislation, scheduled events and so on. And we’re always on the lookout for new trends, important issues and interesting people.

But we’re only as good as our sources allow us to be.

In the end, the people who are most happy with The Spectator’s coverage are those who work with us and take everything in stride, developing trust with our reporters and editors over time.

I can assure you they don’t agree with the coverage at every turn. The fact is there’s always more than one side to an issue. So if we’re doing our job and including all relevant viewpoints in our coverage, nobody should be able to read an article involving conflict and agree with everything in it.

Nor is the information we provide a continuous, unchanging string of facts. The “truth” we attempt to deliver to you with each issue can change, shift or expand as more information comes out. In other words, the pursuit of truth is a messy business. It’s our job, in part, to keep digging with each article we do.

So the next time you see something in The Spectator you don’t like – or, just as bad, something that isn’t in The Spectator and should be – don’t just write us off.

If you knew about it and we didn’t, then we need to talk.