As most graduate students will tell you, dissertations have a way of taking over your life. My experience as a grad student in journalism is no exception. It is with no small amount of sadness that I leave The Minnesota Daily, and this will be my last column as the only college newspaper readers’ representative in the country.
Last fall, when I took the readers’ rep position, a friend told me, “That position is the loneliest in the newsroom.” I could see what she meant — having both the authority and the responsibility to criticize your co-workers might make for a solitary, if not shunned, work situation. So I braced for a lonely stint at the Daily.
But I was in for a surprise. Reporters welcomed me. I was to serve as their resource for media ethics and law questions, as well as their sounding board for debating the merits of those questions. I was also charged with smoothing their relationships with readers. Far from being nervous around me, most Daily staff members felt comfortable talking to me. Maybe that’s because I didn’t have to berate the Daily very much in print. By and large, reporters and editors made the right decisions during my tenure, and I didn’t have much cause to take them to task. When I did have to criticize reporters, I found that they were very professional about it.
Because I’m a teacher in my academic life, I saw this position as an opportunity to educate reporters and readers about the Daily and the dilemmas it faces every day. I used this column as a way to explain to readers the choices reporters and editors made when dealing with fairness, accuracy and justice. But because I’m also a student, I learned a number of things about the relationships between readers and newspaper staff that I’d like to share with you, the readers, who are the reason we do what we do.
One thing I learned is that most people just want the record to be set straight. Many complaints I fielded were individuals expressing concern that one side of an issue was given short shrift. I had tools at my disposal to help assure readers that we were trying to do the right thing. I could offer the reader space in the letters column or encourage them to write an opinion piece. I could put them in touch with the reporter who wrote the story. And I could explain some of the news decisions that were made in the course of the story getting into print. Having these remedies for reader concerns helped a great deal.
Another thing I found out is that readers were grateful that I was around to talk to about their concerns. Reporters and editors don’t try to be hard to reach, but it is the nature of the business that they are out of the office a lot. Because my job does not involve being out in the community, gathering information to write hard news stories, I was available more often to talk to readers, answer their questions and hear their complaints.
Readers also sometimes complained that reporters got defensive about their work, and they feared their comments were falling on deaf ears. I can assure you that this is not true. Yes, reporters are and should be proud of their work. They should be ready to defend it, because they want to be authoritative about their areas of expertise. But most reporters are utterly mortified if they make even so much as a spelling error. Reporters and editors want the newspaper to be as error-free as the readers do, and they do their best to make it so. And sometimes the mistake isn’t the fault of the reporter — but reporters take even those kinds of errors to heart.
This observation leads to the most important thing I learned in my time at the Daily: Understanding the roles of the different players is key to a good relationship with those players. Much of my effort in this position has been devoted to explaining, both on the phone and in print, such things as why editorials are unfair by nature, what goes into making a good letter, what our advertising policy is and what is meant by “fairness.”
Reporters should remember that many readers take a lot of time to read the Daily, and those readers aren’t shy about telling us what they think. Readers should remember that reporters and editors work very, very hard both to avoid publishing a falsehood and to make their work fair to all sides. Everyone should remember that the Daily, like all college papers, is a training paper, and with the exception of two professionals, everyone who works there is a student. All of us are there to learn as we put out the paper, and sometimes mistakes are made. But everyone at the Daily — from reporters, editors and photographers to production staff, columnists and readers’ rep — seeks to put out the very best paper we can, every day we publish.
When I was discussing leaving the Daily to finish my dissertation with Managing Editor Matt Cross, he asked me who I would recommend to take my place, since the readers’ rep position “isn’t an experiment anymore.” I’m pleased that he feels this way, as does Editor in Chief Nick Doty. College newspapers in particular are great places for readers’ representatives, because everyone on staff is learning together. When I eventually take an assistant professorship, I’m going to encourage the campus newspaper there to create the position.
I have recommended someone for the Daily’s readers’ rep position. I think he’d do a great job. I hope that whoever takes over the position finds the job as fulfilling as I did, and I hope that person will like it as much as I have. I’ll admit it was a challenge sometimes, but I learned a lot. I hope you did, too.

— Genelle Belmas welcomes comments at [email protected] or by phone at 612-627-4070 x3282.