Friday, March 6, 1998
Think before you bash The Bruin
READERS: Big downfall of paper comes from lack of student
involvement
In tribute to the media theme of today’s Viewpoint section, the
topic of this column was going to be "Why The Daily Bruin Sucks." I
had accumulated an embarrassment of anecdotes and clippings (not to
mention my own experiences), in support of my thesis to that
effect. But then I had a change of heart. I still intend to tell
you what’s wrong with The Bruin. But first, some background.
It started more or less the first time I ever picked up a Bruin.
The headline article was shockingly idiotic. On a whole, the paper
was so poorly written, so absent of any coherent point or
direction, so slanted, so full of logical, typographical,
punctuation and spelling errors, that I felt compelled to check the
masthead to see whether or not the Daily Bruin bothered to employ
editors. Upon seeing that there was indeed an editorial staff, I
was left to assume that they were all hooked on crack.
A few days later, I found another article goofy beyond the
threshold of human tolerance. Then, another. And another. The Bruin
became in my eyes little more than a source of comic-tragic relief.
But, after a few quarters it stopped being funny. It started to be
an embarrassment. It made me angry.
One day, while reading a particularly inscrutable piece I
finally, and loudly, snapped: "The Bruin sucks! Look at this crap.
This isn’t a newspaper, it’s a free-for-all!" The man driving the
Campus Express upon which I was traveling at that moment took
umbrage to my unseemly outburst. (Timing has never been my strong
suit.) I was summarily ejected and had to cover the remaining 50
yards to Ackerman on foot. On an impulse, I made my way straight to
The Bruin’s offices. I expected it would resemble an opium den,
black-lights, Grateful Dead music and a bunch of glassy-eyed,
pot-heads bitching at each other because somebody spilled bong
water all over the hard-drive that held the following day’s
edition.
I was wrong. It was orderly. The lights were on. There were
computers and telephones. People were busy doing stuff. Anyway, one
thing lead to another; thirty thousand words later you are reading
what is my fifteenth and penultimate column for Viewpoint.
I hate to say this but the Bruin still does – at times – suck.
But it sucks for reasons other than I had originally assumed. It’s
not for lack of trying, not for lack of resources, and not for lack
of talent. I will tell you why the Bruin – at times – sucks:
because you suck.
Let me qualify that. I didn’t mean you personally. I meant
everyone but you. Everyone-but-you sucks because The Bruin is
regularly vilified for not having a more diverse staff. Yet, out of
a student population of thirty-five thousand, only forty people
applied to be Viewpoint columnists last quarter.
Everyone-but-you sucks because they are so deeply couched in
their beliefs that they seemingly disappear between their own
cushions. They go into apoplectic fits of indignation when The
Bruin prints anything that doesn’t toe their ideological line.
Everyone-but-you sucks because to them The Bruin is nothing more
than a forty-page holder for the world’s easiest ESL crossword
puzzle.
Everyone-but-you sucks because they can’t stop bitching about
The Bruin but also can’t stop to do anything meaningful about it.
Now, everyone-but-you might be thinking "That’s easy for you to
say, Mr. Big Dictionary, but I can’t write, I can barely think, and
I sure as hell don’t have any spare time for sharing my opinion."
To them I respond: Of course you do, and who said anything about
knowing how to write? Just read Viewpoint, and you’ll realize that
the ability to form a complete sentence is hardly.
Last week alone, The Bruin ran dozens of articles covering a
multitude of topics, including: affirmative action, class web
sites, snow boarding, sports, religion, Iraq, Black history, gay
fraternities, ASUCLA and salad. Now, guess how many printable
responses from readers the Bruin received last week. A hundred?
Fifty? Twenty? Wrong. The correct answer is eight. Thirty-five
thousand students + hundreds of column inches of text = eight
stinkin’ responses. I rest my case.
As I mentioned above, I initially set out to write a scathing
little expose here; but, something strange happened. It was
Tuesday. I was at The Bruin’s offices when I saw a staff member
sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of a huge pile of
what must have been hundreds of past editions of the Bruin.
I looked at the pile and saw it for what it was: thousands of
pages, millions of words and more. God only knows how many hours of
work, how many interviews, telephone calls, rolls of film,
meetings, keystrokes and deadlines were in there. And what about
the coffee, the frayed nerves, the pressure and – no doubt – the
tears? It was all in that pile.
Later, around two o’clock in the morning, as I sat at my desk in
the wash of monitor glow and watched a cold, steady breeze billow
my curtains into shapes of ghostly figures, it occurred to me that
determining the sum of brain hours, devotion and passion that went
into creating that pile of Bruins would exceed by a long shot any
computational skill I could ever hope to possess. I remembered what
it was like the first time I saw my own thoughts on someone else’s
paper. I remembered the first hate mail I ever received. ("Who the
hell do you think you are …") And somewhere in the backwater
recesses of my mind a little neuron labeled "Daily Bruin" switched
all by itself from "criticism" to "appreciation." I was instantly
humbled. The Bruin rules.
That’s not to say that The Bruin doesn’t need to be better.
Anyone who works there will gladly acknowledge its rough edges. In
the words of one staffer: "A lot of people I know feel The Bruin is
not what they consider ‘quality.’ Either we don’t research enough,
we don’t cover enough or whatever. But, what they don’t realize is
that we’re students too … I know it sounds like an excuse, but
it’s true. Ya, we can try harder, but at least give us a
break."
Everyone wants The Bruin to be the best that it can be. So as I
prepare to leave this school, I’d like to respectfully offer a
short list of real, practical things we can do to make it a better
paper. (By the by: I will employ here the same convention as that
used in one of the more recent features added to Viewpoint – I
refer here to "Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down" wherein members of The
Bruin’s editorial board voice their approval or disdain for various
and sundry news items by means of a Sisklean and Ebertian
thumb-pointing convention.)
Thumbs Down to "Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down." As you know, the editors
compile a list of news items, put on arbiter’s beanies, and vote.
You are not privy to the outcome of the vote (six to one? three to
four?); all you know is that the item in question has been
relegated to being one of two things: good or bad. I suppose I
wouldn’t mind as much if the topics at hand didn’t warrant a shred
more scrutiny than they end up getting. I could live with "Thumbs
down to serial murderers" or "Thumbs up to lovely weather." But,
regrettably, the "Thumbs" items usually aren’t all that easy to
nail. The problem with "Thumbs" heavily condensed and surprisingly
biased blurbs is that they deprive the reader of any opportunity to
consider both sides of the issue and, consequently, form a
thoughtful, well-based opinion.
I am delighted to provide the following example: The Bruin’s
editorial board gave a "Thumbs Down" to a proposed law that would
give judges the option of revoking the financial aid packages of
convicted drug dealers. The blurb was decent enough to point out
that selling drugs was "the wrong way to make money." Frankly, I
found the editorial board’s position on this matter so astonishing
that I had to wonder if some of its members didn’t have a personal
stake in the issue. I disagree with their position whole-heartedly.
But what really bothers me is that some very real components of the
issue were never mentioned. For instance, wouldn’t someone
convicted of selling drugs be indisposed to attending classes from
his or her jail cell? Next, why would someone involved in the
lucrative enterprise of selling narcotics need financial aid in the
first place? Finally (and more to the point), wouldn’t that revoked
financial aid package be re-awarded to someone a bit more deserving
– someone perhaps who wasn’t engaged in the act of poisoning
people’s minds and bodies for profit? Has the concept of merit
evaporated?
I think our readership would be better served if both sides of
the argument were aired. A more interesting approach would be to
post the issue du jour accompanied by opposing arguments a la 60
Minutes’ "Point-Counterpoint." That would be neat.
Thumbs Down to horrifying headline errors. We can’t expect the
copy editors to catch every single mistake. Even the big boys and
girls at papers like the L.A. Times commit an occasional boner.
Last Thursday’s front page headline comes to mind: "Carnesale
looking for a No. 2 man" (Should we assume that women need not
apply?). With all the gender discrimination articles this paper
rightly runs, you’d think we’d be more attentive. I probably
wouldn’t make such a big deal of it if it had been buried on page
eight. It wasn’t though. It was the front page, above the fold
headline. Ouch. In fairness, I should say that for every typo or
mangled sentence, or sexist faux pas you read, a hundred have been
caught and corrected. That notwithstanding, someone, somehow needs
to get a handle on these especially embarrassing mistakes.
Finally: Thumbs Down to The Daily Bruin’s policy against
printing editorial responses to reader’s letters. This is bad. I am
reminded of the most intentionally funny thing I have ever read in
this paper: Justin Horey’s hilarious and cheeky mock-interview with
our new chancellor. Some foaming-at-the-mouth genius wrote in the
next day incensed by Justin’s effrontery. It seems he thought the
interview was real. The writer’s vitriolic response was hilarious
if you had read the column, but made Justin look like a cretin if
you hadn’t. The Bruin’s readership would have been better served if
Justin or the editors had responded: "Hey, Mister, no offense. It’s
called satire."
On this issue, one current member of The Bruin’s news staff put
it nicely: "Some people miss the point so badly that you want to
let them know, but you can’t. They get to have the last word and
unfortunately that’s the aftertaste that everyone else who reads it
will have." Other local throwaways (for example, "L.A. Weekly" and
"New Times") print responses and they are, to me, often the most
interesting part of the paper. For the sake of The Bruin’s
credibility as well as the reader’s benefit, this policy needs to
be reconsidered.
So there it is, my two cents worth. If you think any of my
notions warrant further action, feel free to let The Bruin know. In
closing, I would like to add one last point: I had no idea how much
effort goes into putting out just one edition of this paper. With
what little I do now know of the task, I can only describe it as
Sisyphean. That’s not to say that The Bruin doesn’t commit some
god-awful mistakes all too frequently. And, that’s not to say that
The Bruin doesn’t deserve meaningful criticism. But I think The
Bruin also deserves far more credit than it ever gets.
The people who read The Bruin have expectations. So do the
people who work at The Bruin. When those expectations are not met,
we all suffer to some degree. I don’t know what psychic mechanism
is involved in the willing act of putting your name on something
that will get duplicated twenty thousand times and held up to the
scrutiny of friends and strangers alike. I suppose it varies from
person to person. But I have to wonder how everyone-but-you would
like to see their most recent homework assignment or paper exposed
for mass consumption. How deep a hole can you dig?
Holding The Bruin up to ridicule is easy. Sometimes it’s even
fun. So I suppose it should come as no surprise that so many
readers (whose days are often filled with activities that are not
easy and not fun) find some comfort in taking a poke at the Bruin.
Fair enough. But keep in mind, The Bruin puts out more words in one
day than the average undergrad will put out in an entire quarter.
When everyone-but-you (myself included) considers how much green
ink they might expect to find slathered all over a quarter’s worth
of their own output, The Bruin starts to look a whole lot
better.