Judge’s Comments

Cheryl Pontius, judge • Division I
Judge’s edited issue: Vol. 77 Issue 4

"Staff does a good job and puts lots of thought and effort into publication. Lots of improvement from last year."

Positive Comments:
• Very good mix of content, breadth of coverage

• Great graphics and lots of action photos

• Good writing and style, although watch use of personal pronouns particularly in columns, etc.

• Liked News Beats and Jock Briefs

• Lots of art/photos

• Very nice centerspreads – main dominant story, good range of sidebars with it, good photos and art and nicely designed

• Good mix of reviews, although a little top heavy here

• Good teasers across top of Page 1

• Nice pull quotes – they don’t interrupt reader flow and are well designed

• Good connection of front-page story with a commentary or news story inside.

• Good mix of sports stories

• Pretty good adherence to AP style

Constructive criticism comments:
• Too many “Is” in columns – it’s a forum page for readers, not for staff

• It’s OK to add some world news, but readers can get that through local paper. Better to do school news – particularly on your front page.

• Work on quality/composition of photos – you run great photos and lots of them. It’s a shame the reproduction quality is poor – hope you can work that out with your printer.

• I wouldn’t change the typeface on front page – but I would make it bigger. While you establish dominance with the three photos on Homecoming story, both front-page stories are about the same size and the headline weight doesn’t vary.

• I would eliminate some of the reviews and put more student-related news – clubs, choirs, etc. You do get school-oriented news in on front page (except for October issue) and on editorial pages. But other than sports, you get pretty self-involved. For example, the staff throws a birthday party for dogs; the staff taste tests doughnuts. The staff does all the reviews. Why not have students not on staff do these things for a wider view?

• Didn’t see any letters to the editor or guest columns

• Try to avoid quote leads. Occasionally if you have a tremendous quote, that can work. But it really has to be an excellent quote. You could paraphrase quote and have that as a lead.