Public Interest Pieces Not in Best Interest of The Daily Universe - by Jessica Croft

The other day, I picked up a copy of our campus newspaper, The Daily Universe. The headline of the feature story, which sprawled across the page, sporting bright colors and bold text, read “The Art of the Independents: Indies find success in the mainstream.” Meanwhile, stories about President Monson's recent devotional address and the Provo city elections were shoved to the outer edges of the page, fighting to be seen in the shadow of the gigantic feature article. I was, to say the least, surprised at the condition of the front page. The article that demanded the most attention was the one that had the least relevance and importance to the majority of BYU students. The public interest piece on independent films was completely stealing the spotlight from political and religious articles. This is not an isolated incident. The Daily Universe often neglects to place priority on articles that have real relevance, and instead uses its front-page space to display public interest pieces. Our campus newspaper needs to rethink its layouts.

Layouts should be logically formulated. The front page should be reserved for information that is most informative and helpful to its readers. Public interest pieces are not what I consider to be informative. They can be entertaining, yes, but they do not tell students anything that they could not learn by simply living their lives as BYU students and residents of Provo. The student body is quite capable of recognizing and perpetuating its own cultural practices. Reading stories about BYU dating habits may be entertaining, since the topic is so familiar, but doing so does not result in much else beyond a chuckle and an understanding nod. Referencing our culture can be important, but it is not productive in the sense that we learn something new. Entertainment has its value, but so does news. Hopefully we all agree that the purpose of a newspaper is to present news.

Because newspapers are meant to present news, the overabundance of public interest pieces on the front page can have detrimental consequences. Think about it logically. If BYU students are occupied with public interest pieces, they are paying less attention to news pieces. We college students have a limited amount of time for reading the newspaper. The pieces that we see first when we pick up a newspaper should be the pieces that matter the most. The news is far too important to college students for it to be hidden underneath stories about cardigan sweaters and skinny jeans (see front page of The Daily Universe, September 22, 2009). We, as college students, are at an important stage of life. We need to be preparing to enter the real world, where the real issues are. We can't afford to stay trapped in the bubble of BYU cultural practices. BYU students will not learn to become aware of world and national issues by reading public interest pieces that are directed at a narrow audience. The Daily Universe cannot draw so much attention to its own campus and still expect students to become responsible consumers of news media. It must instead look outward, and by so doing, encourage its readers to look outward and recognize world issues.

This is not to say that looking inward is necessarily completely detrimental. It can be important to draw some attention to one's own culture. Public interest stories do occupy an important space in journalism, and the journalists that write them contribute to the newspaper just as much as the journalists who write world and national news pieces. However, public interest stories need to be printed where they belong; that is, they need to appear in a public interest or student life section of the newspaper, and not as the main headline on the front page. It is possible that public interest pieces could appear on the front page of a newspaper, but they should never distract from the newsworthy pieces with which it shares the page. The careful organization of a newspaper is essential to its efficacy. The Daily Universe is, in part, an opportunity for student writers to publish their work in a realistic setting. Major newspapers put newsworthy issues as the top priority when creating a newspaper layout because they understand that readers will look to the front page for the most important news. The Daily Universe should also prioritize their news stories so as to produce a noteworthy newspaper for its readers and staff.

While autumn outerwear and independent film festivals could be of interest to some readers of The Daily Universe, it remains a fact that news should come first in a newspaper. Entertainment is a secondary function of a newspaper. The primary function of a newspaper is to inform readers of the news issues occurring in the world, nation, state, and community. It's time for The Daily Universe to do the responsible thing and rethink the way it presents its articles and information.