Reader Representative

When should The Crimson cover itself, and why?

The Crimson has done it before, three times in recent memory, and once this week.

In these cases the question that was used to determine The Crimson's self-coverage was this: If the person or organization involved had not been affiliated with The Crimson, would the paper have printed the story?

If the answer was yes, the story ran.

This standard, I should point out, is only applicable to news in the last two years. I have little knowledge of events before that, and even less knowledge of the debates that led to these generally controversial decisions.

But I've witnessed three newsroom fights, participated in two of them, and would like to talk about some of the issues that were raised.

On one hand, it seems that as Harvard College's only daily news source The Crimson should cover itself as it would any major campus organization.

But can The Crimson really be fair and objective in self-coverage? And is it worth the risk to try?

How can The Crimson best serve its readers? By ignoring its own news or by making sometimes-flawed attempts to present a balanced picture of events reporters and editors, or at least their friends, are involved in?

Will The Crimson be too kind to itself--as outsiders might conclude--or too harsh, in an effort to prevent appearances of bias?

These are serious questions which I cannot answer. Everything The Crimson does depends as much on the individuals involved as on general policy.

Perhaps a cursory look at the events The Crimson covered will help inform this debate:

Fall 1993: Crimson President Ira E. Stoll is censured by his own executive board for inappropriate conduct. By any standard, the president of a large student organization being reprimanded by his own board is newsworthy.

Still, the fight over this one was huge, long and nasty. The Crimson ran the story, but some editors still lament that decision.

Spring 1994: Crimson Managing Editor Joe Mathews and reporter Todd F. Braunstein are brought up on ad board charges by the Under graduate Council. Accusations were made, but nothing happened. Still newsworthy. Some squabbling. The story ran.

Spring 1995: Crimson Editorial Chair Daniel Altman is charged with unethical journalistic conduct by avowed Crimson foe Randall A. Fine. The news--a public release by Fine of an old personal note from Altman--was recent. But the issue was two years old and there was no actual unethical conduct, just a questionable offer that was never fulfilled.

News? I'm not sure. The Crimson has run old news before, particularly about Fine. Whether it's a good policy or not is debatable.

I, as a news executive, said we should run the story. Lots of others said we shouldn't. In case any of you didn't read Wednesday's paper, we did.

I thought my best judgment could be reached by removing the personal issues of internal relationships and plugging another name into the equation.

I tried Josh Liston. It worked. Substituting Liston's name for Altman's, I knew The Crimson would run the story.

Whether or not that would have been a wise or fair decision is another issue, and perhaps one I'll take up sometime.

But I felt strongly, three days ago, that The Crimson could and should cover itself as it would any other organization, that in not doing so The Crimson was not doing its best to serve its readers.

Now I wonder whether information from an obviously biased source--whether or not the story itself was fair--is really better than no information at all.