This past week was full of what myself and the rest of the Mustang Daily staff would consider very newsworthy times.
Not only did the paper already have a busy week with two special editions, which are editions of the paper that have a common theme throughout, but Cal Poly managed to do some pretty newsworthy things.
First, the thing that had campus — and our website — buzzing starting Saturday, Oct. 8, the Alpha Phi sorority incident-turned-investigation. The Mustang Daily was the first to report on this event, which was picked up by local publications such as the Tribune, Cal Coast News, KCOY and KSBY.
Then, the MD slowed the coverage to take care of the first special edition, Job Fair on Tuesday. This was partially because Job Fair was a priority, and partially because we were simply lagging. We made up for this one, though.
Starting Wednesday morning, a collaborative effort between five reporters led to a story covering the incident that, in my opinion, was the most in-depth coverage thus far.
Although we stumbled by not following up on the story in Monday morning’s edition, we made up for it on Thursday. And, it turns out this was a popular edition because you couldn’t find it on newsstands anywhere. It was even missing from the MD newsroom.
On Friday morning, the newsstands were full yet again with the second special edition: Homecoming, which remained on stands throughout the weekend.
Yes, we put in some not-so-desirable extra hours to finish this edition, but it wasn’t this uncommon Friday paper that was most noteworthy this weekend. It was the coverage allotted to events that happened outside of our mandated work hours.
Friday also saw two online-only staff reports that covered the new Cal Poly provost and the five-month suspension of Alpha Phi following a judicial hearing Thursday.
These weren’t even the most headline-worthy stories that popped up on the MD website. Within 24 hours, Cal Poly’s Alex G. Spanos Stadium was alive with excitement after a victory over soccer-rival UCSB. Last year, I missed the winning goal and rushing the field, but this year I saw it all, and it was amazing. And, we had up-to-the-minute live blogging by sports editor J.J. Jenkins for anyone who missed it, as well as a game recap published that night.
Cal Poly football saw an equally important win Saturday against the Southern Utah Thunderbirds. The team did, however, lose Asa Jackson to an injury. And the MD sports team was there to cover this rollercoaster of a game.
I guess my point is: the MD is trying harder this year than ever before to cover news on campus that doesn’t fall in our typical Sunday to Wednesday “work week.”
So, if you have any suggestions or tips, please don’t hesitate to email or comment because we want to hear if we are missing something. After all, we are here to first and foremost cover news at Cal Poly.