KUDOs for April 1

It's been a hectic month, but the staff of The South Texan continues to work hard and the last two issues continue to show the progress we have made during the year. The April 1st issue, our April Fool's sorta edition, was solid with but for one mistake. We did not have a folio on pi. Was it intentional to "fool" our readers. Only our editor, Dominique Garcia, knows for sure. Nevertheless, the newspaper was solid with good strong news on the front page and a decent modular layout. Page 2 continue to be entertaining and Page 3 had solid campus news articles, all done by staffers or publications lab students. Well done. Page 4 had a solid lead photo but the University Concert stand alone photo was lost without a story. It was buried among ads. We should avoid this. Page 5 had a solid editorial, one "cute" column on Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition and a serious column on the cost of gasoline. Also, it was nice to see a letter-to-the-editor. The sports pages this week were our weakest elements, designwise. It's great info but we can do much better. There were solid stories on spring football and also the feature on Ruben Cantu (pictured here top right). Well done Claves Charles. Jaime also had a good column. Sports pages should be exciting. These two are not. These two are as functional as my old 1999 Dodge Ram pickup. Finally, Page 8 is a solid photospread on Spring Break 2008. The only thing missing here is a BAP and, perhaps, a scene setter. All the photos compete for attention and the "student element" is missing. This layout could have been better. But, hey, it's functional. In other words, like my old 1999 Dodge Ram pickup, it still works. Having said this, KUDOs this week goes to Clavens Charles (pictured here top left), our chief photographer, who wrote a solid feature for the sports page. Clavens had to do three rewrites before his feature was accepted, but he kept working at it and got it done. Well done, Clavens, your in the pot for the $100 KUDOs award. Good luck.