What is wrong with the Daily? Last year's boycott would have you believe that its a racist paper. Others complain it is biased covering the Middle East. Feminists don't like their treatment of survivors of sexual assault, and everyone complains about misspelling, not to mention the litany of symptoms of a deeply flawed organization I chronicled in Part 2. I think many of the weaknesses of the newspaper can be attributed to internal systemic problems, which, if rectified, could make the Daily can be much better than it is.

    The Society of Professional Journalists, an organization founded in 1909 with over 9,000 members, is the largest professional organization in journalism. The organization has long had a professional code of ethics; most recently it was revised in 1996 after months of discussion and debate. The code of ethics, which is designed to be a template for all types of news organizations, is organized around four basic principals: Seek the truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, be accountable. I'll present my suggestions organized under these four categories, and add one of my own: democratic organization.

Seek the Truth and Report it

     I part three, I think I adequately explained the Daily's flaws when it comes to this principal: too often, the reporters fail to understand what should be reported is truth, not merely quotations strung together. More seriously, however, was how reactionary the newspaper was - reacting to others, instead of constantly searching for news to report.

    As a news reporter I frequently encountered the attitude from fellow reporters and my editors that "if they need to contact us they will." The result of which is that the Daily's coverage of some things - BAMN and a sexual harassment lawsuit where Miranda Massie served as council for the plaintiff, for example - were reported profusely (because they knew how to contact the newspaper, and did, repeatedly), but other cases of harassment went unreported because the participants either didn't know how or desire to contact the Daily.

    Another part of "seeking the truth" is getting out and about to find the news. Not enough emphasis was placed on attending meetings, visiting crime scenes, or listening to the police radio to monitor newsworthy events in town. Too many articles were written by phone and Internet - which, although useful tools, can never be a reporter's exclusive resources. The defense made to this criticism would be most likely that "students are too busy," but I think that rings hollow. A lot of the fun or reporting is writing about one's own experiences, and an insular culture repels potential reporters, thereby forcing MORE stories to be written via telephone.

    Good newspapers gather the news, not just report the news that comes to them.

Minimize Harm

    One of the major criticisms of the newspaper during the boycott was their handling of covering crime. As a former crime reporter, this is an issue I became intimately familiar with. All too often, the only descriptions of criminals that would make it into the paper were vague descriptions of young black men. This happens for a number of reasons, and it is an issue "real" newspapers struggle with on an ongoing basis: how to accurately report crime, without encouraging stereotypes that may be held by either the police or the public. Like most newspapers, the Daily had a policy of only including race when a full description was available: clothing, hair, height, weight, etc. While there is no easy solution to the problem, having a full and open discussion about the newspapers' policy and possible solutions seems to me a common-sense approach. To the Daily, merely having a policy was enough. The situation was made worse when they violated their own policy, which happened, on occasion, most egregiously when the first line in a story read: "A black man assaulted another man on the Diag yesterday." The article went on to describe the assailant, however the damage was done. I think the trust between the newspaper and many students on campus of all races has been eroded because of their sloppy coverage of crime, and there are many ways of dealing with it to minimize harmful stereotypes: actually formulate and publish a clear policy, publish an editors column explaining similar decisions made by the paper, and perhaps even hold a joint public forum on the issue with interested student organizations.

    Any newspaper will only be as good as it knows and understands the community it serves. This commonsense principal is common in the world of journalism, where most newspapers are always keeping an eye out for information they should report but haven't. This commitment to community also means aggressively working to include underrepresented minorities within their own ranks. While affirmative action in higher education may still be a matter of some controversy, journalists have been working for years to increase the diversity of their newsrooms, and the increasing number of racial minorities and women has had the clear direct result of enhancing the reporting of certain issues.

Act Independently

    I think that from a historical perspective, this is one of the most important issues facing the Michigan Daily. Thus, I'll discuss it at some length in Part 5.

Be Accountable

    The simplest thing a newspaper can do in order to accurately report the news is to be open and responsive to their readers, since listening to readers is the best way to know exactly what they're doing well, and what needs improvement. This means, most logically, printing corrections for every error of fact found in the newspaper.

    Also, the most successful papers make available contact information for all of their reporters. A local television news station near where I'm from puts the email address of every reporter on the screen when they are presenting their stories during the evening news, and it has become commonplace for newspapers to print the email address of the reporters at the end of their stories. The Michigan Daily, on the other hand, had until last semester, no contact information on their website whatsoever - not even an email address to send news tips or press releases. To be fair, the newspaper did contain telephone numbers for each section - but in tiny print. In addition to the general news email address and the email address for letters to the editor, the arts and sports sections have email addresses on the mastheads of their respective sections that go to the senior editors in each department. Ironically, the news department is the most heavily insulated from the outside world, with no contact information other than the general phone number and an email address in the entire paper.

    Like all newspapers, news reporters at the Daily have assigned "beats" they were expected to cover. While many newspapers have on their website contact information for the reporters on each beat, oddly, the Daily treats this information as some sort of secret. To make matters worse, reporters switch beats frequently, so the average U-M student has no way of developing a relationship, and any level of trust, with any reporters. I believe this is largely to blame for the sense of latent hostility many feel towards the Daily - one mediocre reporter might have misquoted them or misrepresented a piece of information, and they don't have an opportunity to work with the same reporter again and develop a relationship, something professional journalists know can be advantageous for both.

    Part of being accountable means making a significant effort to print letters to the editor. The Daily's history on this has been uneven - sometimes printing many letters, other times days would pass without printing any letters whatsoever. One semester, I could tell which associate editorial page editor had designed the page, (they take turns) since only one printed any number of letters to the editor. Yes, I realize space is limited, but how many times have you seen space taken up by a mediocre column taken from U-Wire instead of letters. The editorial staff also occasionally takes the next page to print special analysis, and it would be a simple matter to use some of that space to run letters, especially after a particularly controversial issue was in the news. I have met too many people who say they don't even bother writing any letters to the editor because they know it most likely won't be printed - another reason for the newspaper to take seriously the newspaper's role as a public forum for discussion of issues of general concern.

Democratic decision-making

    While seniority is certainly important in a student newspaper where turnover is high and most students will leave in four years, control of the newspaper need not fall exclusively to the group of senior editors known as "M-Desk." This group includes the editor-in-chief, and two editors from each section: News, Editorial, Arts, Sports, Photo, and Online. Collectively they make all administrative decisions regarding the newspaper. Surrounding M-Desk is a shroud of secrecy, and its very existence is generally not known by the lowest level staff members. During the boycott last year, it was M-Desk that decided how to handle it, and that group spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about which writers might be sympathizers.

    While I have no solution to a culture of fear and suspicion that occasionally rose to the level of McCarthy-like hysteria, I do know that democratic institutions function best when decision are made as inclusively as possible. I know dozens of former writers who quit after being told what to do one too many times - while other people who are only too eager to follow orders work up the hierarchy only for everyone to discover they don't really know how to think for themselves.

    Again, my experiences in both the editorial and news staff makes for an interesting comparison. As an editorial staff member, the editors are clearly known and firmly in charge of the section, however virtually all decisions about what editorials should say were decided in open meetings with the entire staff. Consequently, only rarely did staff members feel left out or ignored, even if the group decided not to adopt their point of view. The news department was different; news was almost never discussed during weekly department meetings. Instead, the meetings were composed of the senior editors leading lessons in the newspaper's style, or practice copy-editing. During the daily "Story Conference" meetings where the contents of the next day's paper is decided, the flow of information was almost exclusively one-way: writers who had been assigned stories, or working on news within their beat would report what they were working on, and then frequently left. Occasionally, a reporter would be talking about having trouble getting information, and another reporter would chime in to provide a name, phone number, or other bit of information. Instead of encouraging this type of exchange, which tangibly enhanced the quality of stories, it happened only rarely: reporters came only long enough to discuss their story, and reporters weren't expected to help each other. In most meetings, the reporters presented their story, the editors would ask them if they had called certain people or were including certain information in their story, and they were dismissed.

    In addition to respecting the input of all staff members, the Daily should strive to make their organization more transparent. Democratic institutions are run in transparent ways based on written rules - that way conflicts can be minimized, and the organization can function independent any individual member. The Indiana Daily Student, one of the nation's best college newspapers, has a set of bylaws on their website in PDF format clearly demarcating the and regulations and principals that guide the paper. The Daily, in contrast, does everything possible to keep their short, convoluted document a secret. During my time there I know there to be more than one version saved on their poorly organized computer system. This lack of transparency was at the heart of a number of conflicts at the Daily - over selection of editors, what columnists could or couldn't write, and on what grounds they could be fired. Having well-known rules reduces conflict, and helps all parties focus on the task at hand: publishing a newspaper.

    I realize these suggestions have been somewhat theoretical, and I know how important concrete facts are in the world of journalism. Thus, I have boiled down the above suggestions into ten bullet points:

1. Run corrections for every error discovered in a consistent, prominent space in the newspaper