HOLDING UP THE MIRROR

It’s safe to say that the story of sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan’s apparent plagiarism has captured the attention of the world in a way none of us at The Crimson imagined when we broke the story early last Sunday. The depth and breadth of the coverage—including a front-page story in The New York Times and a top story in The Boston Globe—has brought the campus under a level of scrutiny not seen since University President Lawrence H. Summers announced his resignation in February.

Because we broke the story, The Crimson has received some scrutiny of its own, primarily from those within our community, concerning how we handled the piece. Since our readers see only the finished product of a news article or opinion piece, it is easy to assume that a thoughtful consideration of whether to print the article did not happen behind the scenes. Here I would like to explain to you, the reader, our decision to print the initial story last week and why we handled it the way we did.

We first got word that similarities existed between Viswanathan’s “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life” and two books by Megan F. McCafferty, “Sloppy Firsts” and “Second Helpings” through a tip one Friday. David Zhou ’07, an associate arts chair, read “Opal Mehta” and “Sloppy Firsts.” When he was done, he had identified enough similarities such that the overlaps seemed more than just coincidences. Late on Saturday night, Zhou, Managing Editor Daniel J. Hemel ’07, and I decided to run the story.

Some have criticized The Crimson over e-mail lists for “making the news” or “creating the news” with the Viswanathan scoop. These people see the role of newspapers as reporting events that have already happened or are a matter of public record. Newspapers, they argue, are only furthering their own agenda when they drive news coverage by reporting previously unreported facts.

I would argue, however, that investigating and uncovering news is exactly what newspapers ought to do, and that reporting what is already out in the open comes second to that. Our best stories are those that report facts and events that people in power do not want you to know about.

As much publicity as a headline like “Summers Resigns” gives the paper, we will still always be prouder of “Endowment Tied to Sudan” (the story that first revealed Harvard’s stake in PetroChina, a Beijing-based oil firm) or even “Sophomore’s New Book Contains Passages Strikingly Similar to 2001 Novel.” Investigative journalism is at the heart of what newspapers ought to do, even if it makes the newspaper itself the news. Because it broke the story, the Times will be forever associated with the Bush administration’s telephone eavesdropping, but few would argue it was not doing its job by uncovering the program.

Others argue that while The Crimson has a right to publish the story, it smacks more of tabloid journalism and is not serious news that merits space in the paper. It only makes us come across as petty and jealous, they say. But what these critics must remember is that Viswanathan is a public figure, and her book is a work publicly available to everyone. Five hundred thousand dollars is a serious amount of money, and plagiarism is an even more serious offense. With the press she received in the run-up to publication, she has become a prominent figure at Harvard and in the book-publishing industry. The Crimson normally does not report on plagiarism committed in the classroom, but there is a distinction between a paper submitted for the private evaluation of a professor and a book for sale to the entire world.

Just as The Crimson had profiled Viswanathan and reviewed “Opal Mehta,” so too did we have the obligation to cover this aspect of the story. For us to withhold what we knew would have been egregiously irresponsible to Viswanathan’s readers, as well as to McCafferty and her readers.

That said, we did recognize the uniqueness and sensitivity of the story, and we took special precautions to ensure we handled it as tactfully as possible. Although Viswanathan is, on the one hand, a public figure outside Harvard and within our gates, she is in another respect a student on campus and a private figure. We are fundamentally a community newspaper, and we knew that our story would be incredibly painful to a significant number of people, Crimson editors included, who are friends with the sophomore.

But this does not change the newsworthiness of the story. Just because a person is a student at the College does not make him or her immune to coverage. We report on the noteworthy and exceptional actions and achievements of students made both on campus and outside our walls. When students run the Boston Marathon or take a semester off to hike the Appalachian Trail, we tell you those stories, even though they occurred off campus, and even when these students are not enrolled in courses. And so, we reported Viswanathan’s half-million-dollar book deal.

Newsworthy events, however, are not only the feel-good stories; very often, in fact, they will cause considerable discomfort to readers. But those are often the most important stories to run.

Thus, we decided to run the story but also to handle it with unique care. Often when we update our website with a breaking story, we will e-mail house lists notifying them of the update. Thus, on Tuesday, Feb. 21, students received word via e-mail that The Crimson had updated its website with a story headlined “Summers Resigns.” We purposefully did not send the Viswanathan story to house lists out of respect for the student who was the subject of the article and in an effort to tell our readers that the story was not something we wanted to sensationalize.

Along those same lines, we did not play up the story with a banner headline or a particularly large font on our website. Despite the fact that we were linked on the Drudge Report and a host of other blogs, our headline text remained its normal size. On Monday, the story was even temporary given second-billing on our website below the appointment of Jay O. Light as dean of the Business School. While we would not abdicate our duty to report this important news, we did our best to treat it as sensitively as possible.

I would like to conclude with a brief note on a cartoon that ran in the paper last Monday poking fun at Viswanathan for her apparent literary “borrowing.” Some people have said it was too early for us to run the comic because the news story had just broken and that it seemed as if the news and editorial boards were working together to discredit the sophomore.

In fact, because of the news-editorial wall, no news editor was part of the discussion of whether the comic should run—indeed, nobody from news even knew the comic would run until late in the evening. The editorial chairs and I decided it was fair to run the comic because, by Sunday night, the story had been widely discussed and had been picked up by several other newspapers.

A good number of Harvard students had already been thinking about the issue for a day, and we concluded we were not preempting their judgment of the case by imputing them with one. As an extra precaution, and in recognition of the sensitivity of the situation, we had the illustrator, who normally publishes under a pseudonym, attach her name to the cartoon.

­—William C. Marra, who is The Crimson’s president, can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu. E-mail him with your questions and concerns with this piece or other news board policies.