By RICK NEEL
College Topics Staff Writer

From strategic planning to ethics in journalism, Cavalier Daily staffers continue to benefit from programs provided by the Cavalier Daily Alumni Association.
This fall, the CDAA will be assisting The Cavalier Daily with a strategic planning session for its managing board and senior staff members.
CDAA President Diane Krehmeyer will be the facilitator for the session, the goal of which will be a 5- to 10-year planning document for the newspaper.
“Every board comes in with their own ideas of what they want to do,” said Editor-in-Chief Chris Wilson. “We need something like this to keep those ideas going.”
Some potential projects, such as the purchase of a printing press, cannot be accomplished in one year’s time and, thus, would require long-range planning in order to be sustained from year to year by succeeding managing boards, Wilson noted.
“This is a way for the CD to take some ownership of some of these long-term projects,” Krehmeyer said. She explained that the session will be an opportunity to provide The Cavalier Daily with a road map of how to get things done long-term.
By developing strategic goals for The Cavalier Daily, this year’s managing board can provide more continuity to the newspaper’s operations by making it more likely the board’s successors will see the rationale for those goals and agree to pursue them, according to Krehmeyer.
Justin Bernick, 2003-’04 editor-in-chief, first approached Krehmeyer about having the strategy session. He is among the alumni expected to participate in the session to provide a historical perspective to the current managing board.
Last fall, the CDAA organized an Ethics in Journalism Workshop for Cavalier Daily staff. Bernick asked the CDAA to conduct the Nov. 15, 2003, workshop after an incident of plagiarism at the newspaper.
Law Professor Robert M. O’Neil gave opening remarks on the state of ethics in journalism today. O’Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, provided an overview of what the First Amendment says and does not say about ethics in journalism.
New York Times reporter Jennifer Lee shared with the staff how ethics affects her reporting on a daily basis. Lee also discussed the evolving ethics policy at The New York Times after the May 2003 resignation of Times reporter Jayson Blair for plagiarism and fabrication of stories.
In the workshop’s final segment, Kirsten Martin and Bidhan “Bobby” Parmar from the Darden Graduate School of Business walked the staff through a multi-part interactive case study that raised various thought-provoking ethical issues and prompted considerable discussion among the participants.
The case study, involving a secret society member wanting to be an anonymous source for an article on the society, pointed out how ethical decision-making frequently occurs in gray areas, Wilson noted. “Everything comes down to a judgment call.”
Each new Cavalier Daily staffer now receives an orientation packet that includes information on ethics, much of which was gleaned from the CDAA workshop, Wilson said.
Reporting to the CDAA on the workshop’s success, Bernick commented that “this was the most useful workshop that I’ve ever attended through the Cav Daily, and one with the potential not only to encourage the careers of future journalists, but to directly impact their current work for the CD.”
“I definitely want ethics to be a major part of future conferences,” Wilson said.
Krehmeyer, Bernick, CDAA Program Director Sarah Hall and CDAA Vice President Lisa Guernsey organized the ethics workshop.