I thought I would use my final column of the year to give some advice about ways the Daily can improve its news coverage.

The Daily's day-to-day coverage of current events is top-flight. When a breaking story hits, the Daily throws all it can at the story, whether it is a shooting on campus, the presidential primary or the highs and lows of a sports season.

That said, I think the Daily needs to do more to develop sources outside the traditional orbit of student leaders and administration officials. Many stories feature the usual suspects, from the leaders of the Michigan Student Assembly to the University administration. This leads to a persistent sameness on the front page and a lack of diversity - not just racial and ethnic diversity, but also a lack of diversity in the types of stories in the Daily. When the Daily does write about those groups - in this I include not just minorities, but the groups like the Greek system as well - the resulting stories don't cover as much ground as they could.

There are two kinds of sources that the Daily will find useful. One is the kind of person with knowledge of how the University operates who can point reporters in the direction of big stories and may or may not turn out to be sources quoted in the paper. These are the sort of sources The Ann Arbor News and the Detroit Free Press used to break stories about the University this year, including allegations of favoritism towards athletes and the hiring of a new football coach. Again, both papers benefited from having reporters who have covered the institution for years and have long-standing relationships with sources, something that is not easily done by students only here for four years.

The other kind of sources are those who may not have knowledge about how the University operates but can provide insight into little-explored areas of campus life - groups like veterans, non-traditional students, students with disabilities and ethnic minorities. For example, the furor over the addition of wheelchair-accessible seating at the Big House should have naturally led to stories about how the University as a whole accommodates people with disabilities. Stories about litigation regarding whether the University can legally provide health insurance to same-sex couples could have been used as a stepping-off point to better coverage of gay and lesbian issues. Stories about Proposal 2 could have led down a similar road.

One way to look for stories off the beaten path is to take run of the mill stories that appear in the paper regularly and use them as a launching point for a broader piece. The Daily covers a lot of stories about speeches given by prominent people who visit campus. Some are worthy, but others could be used to examine an issue in more depth.

For example, take the article "LGBT advocate discusses sexuality in the workplace" (04/03/2008). Instead of doing an article solely about the appearance of the head of the Human Rights Campaign, the article could have been about how gay and lesbian students approach the job search. Do they come out? Do they stay in the closet? These events, like the HRC speech, are generally announced with some advance notice, and with a little reporting the story could have been about the transition to the work world for one particular group of students.

Further, more reporting might have given the story more perspective. It also showcased one of my pet peeves: the use of a semi-anonymous source where it's not needed. In the story one person was quoted only by first name. The Daily should not use anonymous sources except in extraordinary circumstances. If someone does not want his or her name in the paper in a regular news story, the reporter should find someone else to quote. By quoting this person anonymously, the article unintentionally made it seem shameful that a student would want their full name in a story about gay issues, when there are plenty of openly gay students on campus willing to talk frankly about their experiences.

The fact remains that the Daily is one of the finest student newspapers in the country, made all the more remarkable by the fact that it isn't supported by a journalism department like many student daily newspapers. Much like my alma mater's college newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, this means the staff tends to have to re-invent the wheel each year because much institutional memory is lost when seniors graduate. It's a challenge I know the Daily's staff can meet. I would like to thank the Daily for finding a place for me here, and I would like to congratulate all the graduating seniors and wish them luck in whatever they do next. Have a great summer, everyone.

Paul H. Johnson is the Daily's public editor. He can be reached at publiceditor@umich.edu.