Judge’s Comments

Cheryl Pontius, judge • Division I
Judge’s edited issue: Vol. 80 Issue 3

"You really try to make this a paper for your school – such a great mix of stories, lots of names and photos. You obviously work very hard as a staff to produce this newspaper."

Positive comments:
• I’m not usually crazy about a full-page photo as the front page. However, you pull it off with compelling, interesting photo (work with your printer on dark, grainy photos). Just make sure the photo content and the reproduction make this an option.

• Nice teasers combined with photo to lure readers inside

• Excellent mix of stories – readers shouldn’t have to try very hard to find articles of interest

• Very good packaging – Studio in Orange County, a ‘reel’ experience, Students cram in a lunch, tattoo doubletruck

• Your People pages are great – you get lots of students/teachers and photos on these pages

• Editorial pages are good, but would like to see letters to the editor and more columns written by students (or even teachers) who aren’t on staff

• Road trip feature is good as long as you keep in mind you are showing readers why they should or shouldn’t visit these sites (since you devote two pages to this, be careful it doesn’t just become a humorous feature on a few of you taking a trip)

• Nice mix of reviews

• Good to see infographs

• Nice to see calendars of upcoming events

• Good stats, by the numbers and upcoming sports event calendar

Constructive criticism comments:
• Because you don’t use color, you might want to lighten your screen on nameplate (or not even use a screen and use black type) and make the nameplate smaller. Then you don’t compete with your front-page photo.

• Try to cut down on the amount of personal pronouns used in columns and features (when you finish an article, read back through it and circle all your personal pronouns. Then rewrite all those sentences eliminating the I’s, You’s, etc.).

• Change typeface or size on editorial to make it stand out

• Eliminate thick rules around boxes (usually a 1-point rule does fine)

• Watch your screens – they’re very dark and can be impossible to read. Try a 10 percent screen because most screens darken with printing.

• I’m not sure why you have a big circle quote on the front page – I couldn’t find any relating story in the paper

• Watch editorializing – especially in sports stories