I would like to preface this Wespeak by saying that this is not a personal attack, and I personally like all the members of the Argus I have worked with. That said, I have been constantly frustrated with it as a publication and organization and feel compelled to write this:
I would like to openly call upon the Argus to better itself, and call upon Wesleyan students to demand more out of their newspaper. I don’t think I am saying anything new to say that the Argus is a very low quality University paper. Over the past four years I have read as the Argus printed uninteresting, inaccurate articles. Rarely do Argus reporters do the necessary research to present a real piece of journalism. And I speak from a lot of experience. Many of the times I was contacted for an article during the presidential search, the questions demonstrated that the reporter had not only not read any of the e-mails I was sending out (I’m not naive, I realize many of you weren’t), but that the reporter hadn’t even read the past articles regarding the search that had been printed in the Argus.
The lack of a reliable campus newspaper is a larger disservice to us as a student body then I think most of us focus on. First of all, in the process of speaking to students about things they would like to see changed about Wesleyan, the buzzword communication came up over and over again. A campus newspaper that would actually provide objective, accurate information regarding what the administration, the faculty, and the students are doing on campus would greatly improve the Wesleyan community. Also, the Argus’ ability to butcher quotes (and sometimes just make them up) leads to policies of not speaking to the Argus, preventing us from receiving some potentially useful information
Additionally, the Argus is a source of information about Wesleyan for outside constituencies. It represents us as a university, and also serves as a source of insight into current campus life for many constituencies. Alumni (especially trustees) read the Argus to see what is happening on campus. I cringed every time a Presidential candidate mentioned reading the Argus. How can we expect people to have an accurate perception of Wesleyan when our largest and most official student publication is so often inaccurate and misleading.
I’ll conclude with some simple advice for improving the Argus:
1. Read your own paper.
2. Research articles. Don’t just ask one person for a quote, get all sides of a story. And actually speak to people. Provide students with information they don’t already have (i.e., don’t just report on what has already been sent out in all-campus e-mails).
3. Fact check. Right now the Argus has a policy of never sending articles to be corrected. Perhaps that is why the Argus consistently prints inaccurate and sometimes just blatantly wrong information.
4. Work with the WSA. We have been begging you to be critical of us. I’m not asking for you to do our PR work for us. However, the WSA knows a lot about what is happening on campus, and there is no reason why the Argus doesn’t have reporters at every meeting, or report more frequently regarding what the WSA is doing. It is more beneficial for the student body to receive objective reports from the Argus regarding the WSA’s activities than for us to clog inboxes.
5. Go to faculty meetings, go to Dean’s meetings, cover more events on campus and be more integrated in the governing of this school.
I’ll stop there, though I invite other readers to write in with their advice for the Argus, but I do have one final pet-peeve: print less newspapers. Whenever I go to the bookstore, I cringe at all the old newspapers stacked in the hallway. Save money and paper.
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