“Online Elsewhere” Identifying Campus Sources

One of the things Online Elsewhere, a research project that looks at California community college online student news publications, measures is the use of sources. As such, we’ve noticed a variety of ways in which sources are identified in different publications.

The industry standard practice, of course, is to use a full name and some kind of relevant identification when a source is introduced into a story. But when it comes to campus sources, what does that mean? One could identify every student quoted in a story as “a student of Xyz College.” But that doesn’t tell us much because there are thousands of other people on campus who could have the same ID, and at a large enough college or university there could be more than one person with the same name and identification. So many publications default to identifying students by their majors. Sometimes even that is not enough. What good does it do me to know that the winning pitcher on a baseball team is a biology major. Some publications identify athletes by their jersy number, but that really does not help the reader evaluate the weight of what is being said.

And what do you do with sources that have multiple identifications, such as “campus janitor” and “local chapter union president.” There, of course, the writer should choose the identification that is most relevant to the story. But that is not what you see in a lot of community college publications, probably because the student reporter is still learning the craft. After reviewing thousands of student stories over the last five or six years we’ve developed a proposed style guide for identifying campus sources. Most publications already follow these guidelines (most of the time), but some publications struggle with consistency.

• Board of trustees members – board member (or title on the board, such as board president)
• Administrators – administrative title (include use of Dr., when appropriate)
• Deans and supervisors – title (including discipline where appropriate, include Dr. when appropriate)
• Faculty – discipline instructor or discipline department chair (include Dr. where appropriate, but know that not all faculty have doctorates)
• Coaches – title (sport probably not necessary as the story probably already identified it by the time the coach is included)
• Committee members – committee titles where appropriate (such as senate president or curriculum chair)
• Classified staff – title (including discipline assignment where appropriate, but avoid position classification , such as Administration Assistant III)
• General students – discipline major (as opposed to freshman/sophomore/junionr/senior, unless relevant)
• Student government – ASB/SGA/etc. title (the fact that it is a student government title is important because some student governments use position titles that can be confused with administrative titles; do not use major or freshman/sophomore unless relevant)
• Athletes – position (not by uniform number, except in cutlines where the number helps identify which athlete; don’t use major or freshman/sophomore unless relevant)
• Actors in plays – role (do not use major or freshman/sophomore, unless relevant)
• Club members – titles when appropriate, such as poetry club president (don’t use major or freshman/sophomore unless relevant)
• Student employees – include “student” with job title/role (readers need that information)

As part of the editing process, editors should mentally note the first reference to make sure the source is properly identified by both full name and identification. This is especially important if paragraphs are moved or deleted. If the full name is not used, explain to the reader why the full name was not used. Standard journalistic style on second/subsequent reference is last name (not first) only for all, though some stories require exceptions, such as two sources with the same last name. 

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