Judge’s Comments

Cheryl Pontius, judge • Division 2
Judge’s edited issue: Vol. 84 Issue 3

Positive comments:
• Very good mix of content, breadth of coverage – local to your audience

• Good action photos for sports stories – watch posed photos elsewhere (always try for the action shot)

• Articles are well written with lots of details and information (some stories need more quotes)

• Your photo poll on opinion page relates to an inside news/feature story

• Nice to see letter to the editor

• Good mix of both major and minor sports – horseback riding, rowing, paintballing, cross country, volleyball, swimming, and sports columns (be sure to label as columns). Sports column is well researched and avoids too many “I’s” in text.

• Very nicely designed opinion pages – editorial, cartoon, columns, letter to the editor

• Good mix of reviews

• Pretty good adherence to AP style

Constructive criticism comments:
• Too many “Is” in columns – it’s a forum page for readers, not for staff. Try to get people not on staff to be guest columnists. (Also, a lot of I’s in feature stories – avoid use of all personal pronouns.)

• Teasers are easy to miss – make the type larger or move to another location on page. Perhaps you could move “Coming Up” inside and put teasers in that space.

• Try using some drop caps, pull quotes or subheads to break up gray

• Increase headline size on editorial. Also, try some two-deck heads on three-column stories. Try to extend head across entire article.

• Work on quality/composition of photos – color reproduction is off – check with printer to work on this problem