Comments (8)

i'm fairly certain most duke students care more about the schools athletic performance than about the goings on of some random office on campus

Michael, I appreciate your arguments. Here are a few selected responses:

On authority - your argument here is specifically countering my claim that 'Duke' does not, in fact, care about men's basketball and football that much. It's certainly true that I am making a bold claim here. However, I think my argument appropriately searches for a bottom line. Surely you wouldn't say that a general Duke audience would want to read 5 out of 5 headline stories on football or men's basketball each week. Maybe 4/5 is OK, though? For me, it seems like this bottom line is well below 3/5. I will concede that this is harder to make concretely (as I really can't do some kind of accurate polling) than I was giving it credit for, but will still hold that my intuitive sense as an undergraduate living on campus is that people don't care that much.

Also, be careful of your logical jump from "enjoy either participating in...or cheering on our various teams" to saying that basketball and football are also what they want to read about. Reading and cheering are two different things. Do you think there would be much less attendance at men's basketball or football games without The Chronicle constantly putting headlines out on them? Doubtful! The people who are going to enjoy these events already do, so why do they also have to take up so much paper space for the rest of us? (I use "rest of us" in more of a metaphorical sense here, as I frequent these games as well, but don't also feel the urge to see them on the front page every other day.) If you do happen to want to read about sports after the fact, then goduke.com is the place for you.

On campus culture - your argument here is more countering my claim that 'Duke' should not care about these two sports enough to warrant 3/5 headlines. To your question "Do you believe that The Chronicle's choice to focus on two teams - one of which up until today was still in the fight to go to a bowl game for the first time in too long and another which has been a major part of the making of a national reputation for this school - is *undermining* campus culture?" I answer, emphatically, YES!

I was talking with one of my professors from Australia the other day about sports culture on campus and I said "Well, it does help our reputation and attracts 'better' students." She said, "They aren't better if they're going to choose a school based on sports." I liked that answer. And, further, 'Duke' (not as a community but as an institution) agrees with us. If you read the university's mission statement, there is no critical importance to be seen for sporting events or teams. I think if we want to have sports teams on campus for entertainment, then alright, but when they start dominating our campus newspaper, it seems like that paper has lost sight of what university news is. The purpose of The Chronicle, I think, as our only campus paper, is not primarily to report on these issues that are completely tangential to the mission, but to tell us what's really going on at this place.

In this way, I really couldn't care less (except for the fact that it would be generally depressing and offensive) if 'Duke' (as a community) really did want 5/5 (or even 3/5) Chronicle headlines to be on men's basketball or football. That is just not a fair representation of what is actually going on here, and it's surely not a even close to an accurate portrayal of our mission in action; that is, why we're all supposed to be here and what we're supposed to be working towards together in the first place.

You say "you have to admit that, in general, football and basketball are the ones with the capacity and the attraction to have the most student participants; and in so being, are worthy of coverage by the student newspaper." To this I say, emphatically, I WON'T! Even if I give you the premise that these events having the largest number of student participants, for me there is no logical connection to the conclusion that these warrant (quasi-constant) coverage by The Chronicle. I simply don't think this valuable space should be a popularity contest. That is, for me the importance of a news story is derived more by the quality of its contents and message than the quantity of its spectators.

Michael, thanks for your call to specificity.

Here are a few events last week that could have made the front page. The dates listed are the day the events occurred, so the story could have run on that day (preferably) or the next.

15 Sun - Jewish Life's Student Conference with the Consulate General of Israel to the Southeast. How often does that happen?

16 Mon - Duke Conversations with Unite for Sight campaign advocating for eye health and preventative blindness. There are several other Duke Conversations throughout the week that could have been featured, but I won't mention them here.

Amnesty International's discussion with a well-known activist on honor killings and women's rights in the middle east.

18 Weds - Lecture by a traveling journalist and Africa reporter in the International Policy Lecture series. There are tons more lectures and talks that could have been featured, but I won't go into them here.

Screen society. I don't think I've ever seen a movie/documentary event featured on the front page and they run all the time. Including this day.

19 Thurs - Meal Swap. This was a big initiative on campus to get students to help alleviate hunger in Durham.

Duke wind symphony concert in Baldwin.

Further, if The Chronicle was going to go with sports on Thursday (which they didn't, instead going for frats) why not men's soccer's first round game of the NCAA tournament being played AT HOME!!!?

I was really nervous that Awaaz wasn't going to get the top spot for Monday, but luckily it has (although not on the online version, that went to football). The fact that I have to worry about that, though, is telling (and I think it was a legitimate concern). Also, instead of giving football the bottom half of the front page both Friday and Monday (for the same game!!!) why not cover Duke volleyball's (who are 26-5 and 16-3 in the ACC!) 3-0 sweep of Carolina on Saturday?

In sum, the events listed above maybe not the most heavy hitting events on campus, but I would have rather read about any of them than men's basketball or football on any day. It's somewhat hard to come up with specific events when it's after the fact and you don't have much time, but when The Chronicle takes it as their job to seek out these stories and has more people putting more hours into it, I'm sure they could have come up with even better ones.

Again, the assertion that only stories that already have a lot of interest going in necessarily have to be the one's most prominent just doesn't work for me. How are people supposed to get behind women's tennis (#1 in the nation!!!) or go to a lecture on pressing world issues if they don't KNOW about them in the first place? Why don't we use the top Chronicle spot not only to tell people about what they're already interested in, but to get people interested in things that are really great that they might not have heard of? It might seem like some of the events are small, and maybe they are in terms of numbers, but that doesn't mean they're insignificant!

I just don't understand why it's more important to read about how many times a ball went through a hoop than it is about women's rights or preventing blindness. Maybe it's more fun to watch, so watch it! but why does it have to take over the NEWS?

There are so many more arguments to go into, but I'll have to save them for now.