This morning, at midnight, I munched on Frosted Flakes and pored over student journalism. I was a participant in a witching hour tête-à-tête with college newspaper staffers that for me was the highlight of convention programming.
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The midnight cereal critique involved a bevy of advisers offering instant analyses of student newspapers to their staffers, completed in schizophrenic round-robin style. (The advisers stayed put and the students sat and popped some issues in front of them when a table became free.) Some students wore costumes, including a young woman from Murray State University who wore a dress made entirely of newspapers- creative ink-stained couture whose only drawback seemed to be that the student could not actually negotiate a way to sit down.
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While discussing the pubs with students, I found myself returning to three main focus areas:
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- List-lessness: I flipped through lots of papers filled with calendars of events, police blotters, and world news round-ups laid out with all the energy of a heroin addict, after a fix. The dates or geographic locations served as the headers. There were few, if any, graphics or photos breaking up the eye-gouge-inducing blocks of text.
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Lists deserve some art and some creative (even snarky) headlines. Give people a reason to read. And with events calendars especially, exhibit some news judgment. Students can peruse every campus happening via the school website or SGA mass e-mails. The newspaper should not be a repository of everything, but a spotlight for some things. Certain event previews should be highlighted more than others. And some potentially do not deserve a mention at all.
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- News vs. Features: A number of smaller campus newspapers that were plopped onto my table sported a mix of sections that included both news and features. The problem: The features looked like news to me, and I never received a satisfactory answer as to what the features section specifically represented or why it deserved a distinct separation from news.
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The general gist for many papers seemed to be: The features section includes more pieces focused mainly on students or longer-form journalism. They also tended to have more alluring photography and snazzier layouts. But they were still news, at least in the classic sense of what we separate from A&E, commentary, and sports.
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My bet is that if the student staffers could not really define the section to me, neither can their student readers on campus. Two ways to solve that problem: Come up with a rock-solid coverage scope and stick to it. Or mesh it in seamlessly with news, making that whole section as snazzy as features is now.
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- Packaging Problems: The front pages of every paper I critiqued displayed the most design and newshound chutzpah. The problem was in the follow-up. Typically, the lead story getting all the graphic, layout, and header attention on page one was whimpering to a close on page two with nothing but a smidgeon of jump text.
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It is a sad ending for an article that deserves more- especially because, as staffers candidly shared with me, the front page piece tended to be the only big story in the entire issue. The solution: story packaging!
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Think info graphics- a breakout Q&A with a central source quoted in the piece, a timeline of events or by the numbers breakdown. An entire sider might be warranted. A prominent teaser for online extras such as a photo slideshow might be the way to go.
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The bottom line: Diversity of content in a newspaper is fantastic, but an issue’s lone big story should get the full RPT (reporting and presentation treatment).
