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Dear Storyboard community:
Nearly two years later, it was a team of student journalists at Cornell University’s Daily Sun who broke the story of a woman who was allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted by seven men at the university’s Chi Phi fraternity house in 2024.
On Sept. 16, the woman, a former Cornell student, filed a lawsuit against the university, the fraternity, and the seven current and former students, none of whom were charged with crimes at the time. The horrific details in the lawsuit — as well as the university’s punishment, which included “assigning essays” to those involved in the alleged rape, according to the suit — have generated an uproar around the country.
Cornell Daily Sun senior editor Cereese Qusba had been working on the story for 23 months. She “got in contact with Jane Doe, the plaintiff, and built a relationship with Ms. Doe and her lawyer. Ms. Qusba interviewed university administrators about their approach to disciplining students accused of assault,” The New York Times reported.
Following the Sun’s initial coverage, and its editorial board’s call for justice, prosecutors have reopened the investigation — a reminder of journalism’s power to demand accountability when a publication is determined to not let a story get buried.
“There was no sugarcoating in that article,” Qusba told The Cut. “Most details were included even if they were graphic or uncomfortable. I think it made a really big statement. To read the details of this alleged sexual assault was jarring for a lot of people and made a really big impact on them.”
The paper’s coverage also underscores the importance of building trust and taking a trauma-informed approach to reporting. For more on those topics, read perspectives from Erika Hayasaki and narrative editor Jan Winburn in the Nieman Storyboard archive. The Global Center for Journalism and Trauma also offers a guide for student journalists on covering campus rape and sexual assault.
Links of note
- Gillian Brockell, the former Washington Post reporter (and former flight attendant) who created her own beat as an independent journalist tracking ICE flights, talks to Long Lead’s Depth Perception newsletter about using her aviation knowledge to cover the deportations and third country removals. “Just in terms of technically doing this reporting, I have a base knowledge of how flight planning and scheduling work, and what federal aviation regulations are being violated on all of these flights. I am sitting here saying, ‘They shouldn’t be shackling people, because then they can’t evacuate.’”
- Tommy Tomlinson writes a beautiful tribute to Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander, who retired from baseball after 21 seasons in the majors, and it doubles as a great lesson for journalists about how to end a story. “One thing I learned early in my writing career is that stories don’t always have a classic happy ending — in fact, that kind of ending can feel cheap and phony. Instead you should figure out if there’s a place to create a satisfying ending — something that makes sense and feels real and completes the character’s story.” For Verlander, that meant an emotional surprise visit to the mound by his seven-year-old daughter.
- Deesha Philyaw, author of the new novel “The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman” (and who I’ve been lucky enough to work with at Ursa) talks to Latria Graham at Scratch about both the financial realities of a writing career, and the importance of understanding rejection, and separating it from ourselves. “A lot of what people are upset about around rejection happens because there are more people who want to publish books than there can be books published. So once you realize that lots of great books don’t get published or that those books don’t win awards because there’s only so many awards, you disconnect the outcomes from how you feel about yourself. That was it for me.”
Keeping showing your courage, and keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
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