Cambridge Common

a note about sourcing

I had a quick conversation before the debate last night with a few friends from the Crimson. They had read my post on the utter superficiality of the Crimson's coverage of the UC race to that point (today's article is somewhat better) and made the absolutely fair point that Cambridge Common has a lower threshold of fact than the news page. While I don't think that this actually prevents the Crimson from pursuing some of the more complex and thoughtful coverage we need on this subject, it is true that our format is soft, not hard, news. Statements made here are owned solely by the authors, we have no editors or aspirations at greater institutional legitimacy. This means that, while we do try to be accurate, we are imperfect. Case in point: in the post I mentioned the fact that different candidacies are mobilizing their Final/Social Clubs for their campaign. I was right on two counts, but wrong about Annie and the Isis. I stand corrected, and apologize for the mistake.

Even so, readers should know that I believe that I can be opinionated and accurate at the same time, and I beg anyone who catches me on a factual inaccuracy to call me out on it, either in the comments section or a personal email. I will correct myself. Cambridge Common, especially in the context of something like the UC race, is combining analysis, opinion and reporting in a way we hope is interesting and informative for our readers. We don't aspire to the dry factuality of the Crimson, but we're trying our best to be fair, so always feel free to say so if you think we've missed that mark.

posted by andrew golis @ 1:08 PM