I've been considering applying for the position of Ombudsman at the Daily Californian. The job is defined as

a government appointee who investigates complaints by private persons against the government

Presumably I would be in charge of criticizing the Daily Cal's news coverage, corrections policy, etc. Technically the job is called the 'Readers Representative,' which is a silly phrase when applied to Berkeley. To successfully represent all readers the job holder would have to complain about both the Daily Cal's obvious liberal bias and its disdain for minorities. 'Ombudsman' is a better word for the precarious position of the job-- both a part of the Daily Cal and outside of it.

I have very little qualifications to criticize the Daily Cal well. Granted I've spent nearly two years bitching about this or that. But I have only one actual article to my credit-- one where most of the actual fact-checking and writing was done by my Editor, Emma Schwartz. There's also the fact that the biggest problem the Daily Cal faces is its abysmal relationship with minority and Progressive groups. I have very few ties to either.

So I drafted most of a sample column. I've had this idea kicking around for awhile. I don't know if it'd work, but it might be worth a shot. I'm edgy about it because of the huge amount of assumptions I threw in.

The Daily Cal gets in trouble approximately once a year for something within its pages construed as racism, primarily by progressive groups and minority rights activists. Last year this was a cartoon parodying North Korean Dictator Kim Jong II and an article naming a Black football player as an alleged criminal. The year prior it was a cartoon just following September 11th about Muslim hijackers in hell. The biggest furor was the year before that, when David Horowitz ran a full-page ad condemning slavery reparations. Typically the protests involve surrounding the Daily Cal or occupying their offices, calling for an apology and editorial changes. When I say typically I mean 'invariably.'

There has been no improvement in race relations following these incidents and there never will be if the pattern continues. The philosophies and motivations are simply too different. Broadly speaking, the Activists want the Daily Cal to allow some form of editorial oversight by the local community, make good faith efforts to represent underrepresented minorities, and add a code of ethics. The Daily Californian staff already uses the journalist code of ethics, which requires editorial independence. This is fundamentally opposed to the notion of 'responsibility to the community.'

Without getting into which side is correct, there will never be any compromise between the two sides. For the Daily Cal to compromise on their Editorial independence means they will not be respected as Journalists by any of the major papers they hope to work for some day. In other words, if they apologize, all they are is admitted racists who apologized for it. Who wants that? For the activists to compromise would require giving up the idea of community control over its media, the central tenet of their complaints. Indeed, some would argue that both sides benefit from this lack of compromise. The Journalists look like they're standing up for free speech and independence. The Activists look like they're working to prevent racism in the community.

We'll all be happier when both sides understand the unproductive cycle they've locked themselves into and look past it. There are strategies that can improve race relations between the Daily Cal and underrepresented groups.

The best idea I've heard is to build a productive relationship between the Daily Cal and the activist journalists that make up the lesser-known Berkeley newspapers. These are Onyx Express, the African-American paper, Hardboiled, the Progressive Asian paper, Al-Bayan, the Muslim (Arabic?) paper, and La Voz, the Latino (Hispanic?) paper. The Daily Cal doesn't cover underrepresented groups very well primarily because it has very few reporters with ties to those groups. So strike a deal. The Daily Cal gets to broaden its coverage and reporting pool by drawing upon those reporters. The activist papers get vastly expanded distribution of their stories and attention drawn to their own work. It's similar to the syndication deals that all papers use nationwide-- as in when you see a New York Times article in the Chronicle.

(Address how to handle the touchy issues of rewrites? Boiling out bias? Or simply gloss over it as 'negotiations will address how to...?')

Email This Post!