“Some of our readers may feel that we’ve been reporting too much crime. Every issue, it seems, has a crime story on the front page. Stories about robberies, assaults, rape, or a story about an ex-employee allegedly spying on women in a residence hall bathroom.”
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Some of our readers may feel that we’ve been reporting too much crime.

Every issue, it seems, has a crime story on the front page. Stories about robberies, assaults, rape, or a story about an ex-employee allegedly spying on women in a residence hall bathroom.

We report crime because it is newsworthy. While some individuals may feel that it is not relevant or important to them, crime on campus affects all of us.

When someone gets robbed at gunpoint half a block off-campus, it’s our job to report it. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be doing our job.

If we didn’t, you should be pretty upset that you’re being kept in the dark about threats to your safety.

And don’t worry about prospective students picking up the paper and deciding against coming to UA.

We live in a city; prospective students and their parents already know it’s not the safest place to go to school.

Besides, shouldn’t they know what they’re facing? That way, they can make an informed decision about where to spend their college years.

If we stop reporting crime to only report positive things, we’d lose relevance and credibility among our readers.

What we don’t understand is why people don’t want to read stories about crime. If you’re a student living in the area surrounding campus, we would think that stories about crime on your street would be important to read.

And if these stories make the university seem like a haven for criminal activity, that’s not our fault.

But it’s probably not far from the truth, either.

Whether our newspaper’s front page is positive is irrelevant. It would be a disservice to our readers and the community if we only covered speakers, ceremonies and awards.

That’s called PR. The university already pays a bunch of folks good money to take care of that. We’re reporting the news, and it’s not our job to pick and choose stories based on how they make us feel. That’s called objectivity.

We resent the idea that because our writers are reporting crime, their stories are not worth reading. We also resent the idea that we have stooped to the level of cheap television newscasts.

We are not reporting crime to keep people reading.

We are reporting the crime on and around campus because it’s important and relevant to the campus community. It’s what a newspaper does, and it’s what a good news section does as well.

Reporting crime may not be the most desirable thing to do, but it is our job.

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