Reader Representative

The recent snafu in the coverage of the men's wrestling team's performance at Nationals brought into sharp focus one of the most irksome long-term grievances with The Crimson's sports pages. The wrestlers had a spectacular showing, with co-captain "Dustin Denunzio '99 earning Harvard's first All-American award in fifteen years, and Jay Weiss being voted Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association Coach of the Year. Not only was there no reporter present at the event on March 21, but even the post-fact report in The Crimson ran only on April 2. Accounting for Spring Break, this was still an unnecessary four-day delay during which the news had become stale and interest had already subsided.

A number of other sports, among them the most successful athletic programs at Harvard, have similar, and even more serious, complaints. Fans of Harvard sailing, golf, squash, wrestling and women's rugby have good reason to be proud of their team's performances. They are equally justified in feeling short-changed by The Crimson's infrequent, ill-informed and unpunctual coverage of their respective sports.

Daniel Ezra '98, co-captain of the eight-time national champion men's squash team, remembers only seven squash articles in The Crimson during his four years on the team. "And even when they'd write, they had people who didn't know anything about squash writing the article. [These writers] don't appreciate how much the game takes and just take it for granted that we'll win," he said. Daniel Parkes, a senior on the men's sailing team, ranked eighth in the nation, went a step further, "No one here even knows we exist. Even when we won the Admiral Moore Regatta, the big inter-varsity Spring event, there was no story in The Crimson." Lori Rifkin '00, who plays hooker on women's rugby, which has qualified for Nationals as a club team two straight years in a row, claims, "A girl from the team had to write an article last year to get us in The Crimson. Our match listings don't even make the "On Deck' box."

There are essentially two responses from Crimson editors. Jamal Greene '99, Sports Editor, says, "We'd love to be able to cover all sports, but we don't have the resources." The Crimson is constrained not only by a student publication budget, but also by a paucity of sports writers. Also, the paper depends solely on the University Sports Information Department for listings, results and statistics of all sporting events. "When [the SID] doesn't cover an event, getting the stats is a pain, and we just don't have the means," says Crimson president Matthew Granade '99.

The second response is a sort of justification for the current system of prioritization. There is not enough reader interest in certain sports to warrant more extensive coverage, editors claim. "Also, we can't force anyone to write a story. So we are limited by writer's interests, as well," Greene explains. He did concede that in obvious cases, when editors feel that a story must be written and no one is willing to take it up, an executive will step in to write the story himself.

There are spirited reader ripostes on both counts. Caitlin Colligan, spokesperson for the Sports Information Dept., insists that they have reports and results for every meet in each of the 41 varsity sports. Besides, team members said they would be happy to provide The Crimson with all the details it needed if it were writing a story. While the number of writers seems to be a legitimate constraint, information certainly should not be.

As for the level of interest, the wrestling team has had more than 300 spectators, with standing room only in the MAC, for some of its home meets. Women's rugby counts 50 members on its team roster alone, and home fixtures for squash attract enough people to fill up Hemenway gymnasium. These numbers would seem to justify at least a mention on the last page. Also, as varsity sailor Dan Parkes '98 points out, "It's difficult to be interested in something you don't know exists. If The Crimson gave us more publicity, I'm sure more people would go out for the team and come and watch us."

This segues into the more fundamental question that The Crimson needs to ask itself: what are its obligations and priorities as a student community newspaper? Wrestling co-captain Ed Mosley '99 points out that these should be different from those of larger, commercial newspapers, whose outlook is to write stories that will sell: "Now that The Crimson is given out free to every undergraduate, it has to be representative of every aspect of student life, regardless of sell value." There is a large proportion of the student population devoting anywhere between 10 and 30 hours a week to a competitive activity. Justifiably, they feel they deserve some recognition, especially when they excel.

Besides representation, reporting sporting successes can only help in building a sense of pride and school spirit, sadly lacking at Harvard. How many of us even know that we have a champion women's squash team, which won the NCAA title five years in a row and includes the reigning No. 1 player in the country? Finally, some extra publicity could help deserving causes, such as W. Rugby's bid to gain varsity status and secure the additional resources the program merits.

There are encouraging indications that The Crimson is aware of these broader obligations, and recent changes have all been in the right direction. Both the sailing and squash teams counted four stories in The Crimson this year, which is more than ever before by a large margin. The Sports department has a larger executive staff this year, which means that more sports are assured some coverage. There has also been a concerted effort to have more features highlighting issues in less-known sports, such as women's boxing, weight loss techniques for wrestlers, fencing and Women's Olympic Hockey.

From my discussions with both readers and editors, some suggestions for further improvements emerged. At present, beat reporters are assigned only to the bigger sports such as basketball, football and soccer. The Crimson should assign a beat reporter or executive to every sport, so that someone feels responsible for keeping up with the sport, regardless of how often it ends up being covered. To supplement this, each sport could have a Crimson liaison, whose job it would be to keep the reporter informed about upcoming events and past results.

Granade and Greene both invited more sports, especially those without varsity status, to take an active role in keeping The Crimson in the know. "If [the story] is handed to us on a plate, we'd love to do it. That is not ideal, but it is better than not getting any coverage at all," Granade said. Let's take them up on their offer.

Kaustuv Sen '99 is The Crimson's Reader Representative. Sen, an economics concentrator in Eliot House, can be reached at readerrep@thecrimson.harvard.edu.