Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The man behind the camera

If you read the Sports page carefully on a regular basis, you've probably become familiar with one student's name. It's not Marc Verica or Monica Wright, though — it's Jason O. Watson.
Though Jason O. Watson isn't the star of a U.Va. sports team, for the past several years he's been the star of our photography department, particularly when it comes to sports photography. Next time you pick up the Sports page, if you look closely, you'll see he's responsible for most of the photos appearing on the page.
If you've enjoyed the action shots you've seen in the paper or his occasional political photography for The Cavalier Daily, be sure to check out Jason's website for more great shots.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Behind the scenes

With a staff that changes every year, few things in The Cavalier Daily's operations are constant. To maintain some form of continuity from year to year, The Cavalier Daily operates on the basis of a policy guide and its constitution. Not all policies make sense forever, though, so The Cavalier Daily's staff recently completed its annual update to each of these documents.
In last week's Constitutionals meeting, the entire staff — at least, all of the staff members who didn't have a legitimate excuse to not be present — gathered to amend our organization's constitution. In the meeting, the staff altered a few positions and sections of the staff, including the online department, the business staff and the copy editing staff. Normal readers should not have any reason to notice any difference in the newspaper and website being produced for them daily — updates to the constitution reflect basic institutional changes that often have already been informally implemented for several months or years.
Our policy guide, meanwhile, contains procedures that affect readers more directly. To see updates relating to how letters to the editors are processed, policies on gathering quotes by e-mail versus telephone and other topics, check out the updated version policy guide on our website at your convenience, and don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Hoops special edition

If you were expecting to read about University news in today's Cavalier Daily, we hope you won't be too disappointed. Instead of our typical paper, today you can find "Hoops" on our newsstands.
Whether you're a die-hard sports enthusiast or whether you just want to impress your friends by knowing a little bit about the Cavs this season, we hope you'll enjoy this annual special edition. Inside, you'll find a rundown of men's basketball in the ACC for the 2008-09 season, as well as features about both the men's and women's teams at U.Va. Our sports writers really did their homework for this issue, interviewing athletes and coaches from across the ACC, so we hope you'll find the issue informative -- even if you don't agree with our predictions about how each team will perform this season.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Picking our pictures

When you pick up the print edition of The Cavalier Daily, one of the first things you see is what we call the "Weather Pic" — a photograph on the front page that's not directly related to any of the News stories.
In the past, you might have seen anything from a squirrel eating a Crunch bar to a cute trick-or-treater on the Lawn in this space. In general, we use the Weather Pic to liven up the News page with an artistic, active shot of life around Grounds. Some days the photo depicts standard occurrences on Grounds in an artistic way, while on other days, it may highlight a student performance or event that we are not able to cover in the form of a story.
If you have an idea of an event that could lead to an interesting photograph, be sure to let our News department know as soon as possible (and obviously in advance of the event) — we'll certainly consider all suggestions. And if we hear about two events that would both make great photos, we'll do our best to include both — one on the front page and one on the second page of News content.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Covering the Elections

We hope you'll take a moment to check out today's Cavalier Daily,
featuring election news ranging from local voter turnout to analysis
of the presidential election. Though The Cavalier Daily's News section
does not usually address national politics, we make an exception each
year for election-related coverage.
In order to provide you with the best election coverage we can — in
addition to giving some of our reporters valuable experience — The
Cavalier Daily sends reporters out of town each Election Day to gather
news relevant to our readers. This Election Day, we had reporters
stationed in Northern Virginia, Richmond and at the election night
events for congressional candidates Virgil Goode (R) and Tom Perriello
(D), gathering information from state and local politicians. Sending
reporters out of town may complicate our jobs, but we hope you'll
enjoy the result. And, of course, as with all of our news coverage, we
welcome your feedback.