Sunday, November 9, 2008

KUDOs Nov. 6 issue

Well, this could have been a great issue. In many ways, it was solid. The pi layout and the back page layout kind of salvaged this edition. But, even the pi layout was flawed. The story, which was very good by Mary Beth Cleavelin, is not readable. A poor print job by Alice soured this otherwise very solid page design and I messed up by not counting on my experience and telling you that type was too small to pass the Alice Publishing litmus test for a reverse type layout. I knew that, but said nada. Well, let's examine why. It all boils down to the vast majority of the staff not doing its work. We asked for an extension for pi and maybe another page, from the Monday deadline to Wednesday morning. This means we had plenty of time to get the other pages together and read and fix them and make sure they were solid and professional and (whatever). Instead, no one worked Monday. No one worked Tuesday and no one had finished products on Wednesday for us to read, proof, make sure it was correct, etc. I wound up doing most of page 2, editing the columns, and Adriana did the ed-ops page. Are you kidding me? In the meantime, we had no time - I repeat - no time to do a comprehensive and scholarly (yes, this is scholarly) study of design and content because Alice was calling asking "Where's the paper?" Again, I plead with you (no one is listening or reading this I know) to finish the editorial page, P2, the Campus News Page and most of the sports page by Sunday so we can fine tune it on Monday and not be on !@#$%$* rush. I know, no one is reading this. We will just continue to wait til the last minute 'cause we work well under pressure. Maybe, but as of this week, two of us have had chest pains and it's not getting easier. Please do your work. Please finish P2, the ed-ops page, campus news, most of sports and pi by Sunday so we can fine tune on Monday and make adjustments where needed. Page editors must finish their pages or just say "I can't do this no more." Also, JC, let's see if we can "review" preliminary layouts at the very least Friday afternoon. The layouts, look at the Campus News page, are sophomoric and deserving of a D5 paper. We're D3. We can do better. Come on? I would like to do a page-by-page evaluation but it's useless. Nothing is ready until after the noon on deadline day, and by then it's just "let's get this paper out of here!" For example, the ed-ops page had that column by Bob that has too much leading, too much. There were several stories with too much or too little leading. We know better, but we couldn't fix it cause we didn't have time. The ed-ops page also had Nndy's picture darker than the caverns of Carlsbad. We should have fixed this and we all know how to do it but (join with me here) "WE DIDN'T HAVE TIME!" The same can be said about the "blue" picture of groundbreaking and we should have had a more solid picture of this. Get on the ground. Take a picture of the shovel, which by the way had a big picture of HOG!. Wow. The Hog, getting dirty, into the ground...wow...might make a good photo.
There were some good points on pi. We didn't have a teaser 'cause the most important story of the 21st Century was going on, and that was good. We, instead, had a horizontal tease line at the bottom of the page. That was good. It looks nice. And, our "weather" eggs made sense. How did we do this? Wow. And, I would be remiss if I didn't mention what a fine job Mary Beth did with her story. Too bad (say with me here) NO ONE COULD READ IT! Why? Okay, (say with me here) WE DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO EVALUATE THE TYPE SIZE CAUSE ALL OF US WERE LATE, LATE, LATE AND DIDN'T WORK, WORK, WORK ON THE EXTRA DAYS AND ADDED TIME WE HAD. We could have done better and we will.
On P2, well, we didn't have the PacMan photo in the layout until noon Wednesday. Why? We took the photo last Halloween. And, it didn't fit the fortmat. Oh, what does that say? Use another picture, crop it in Photo Shop or use different bastard measures to make it fit. On P2, the blotter was solid, Chupi was cute and JC's review was excellent. On page 3, what a waste of space with that blurry picture of Tallant, our blue president. We needed to fix this in Photo Shop. Why didn't we? Say with me now -WE DIDN'T HAVE TIME CAUSE ALL OF US WERE LATE, LATE, LATE AND DIDN'T WORK, WORK, WORK ON THE EXTRA DAYS AND ADDED TIME WE HAD. Oh, on this page stories were solid but the best things were the ads. The Squirrely's ad is cool. Editorial page had some solid writing and great local cartoon. The edtorial was solid and timely. On sports page, we had one great picture - Billy Martin running. We should have run this bigger. The other two pictures were "stretched." We didn't fix this because, (say it with me now) WE DIDN'T HAVE TIME CAUSE ALL OF US WERE LATE, LATE, LATE AND DIDN'T WORK, WORK, WORK ON THE EXTRA DAYS AND ADDED TIME WE HAD. Oh, congratulations to Jaime on the wonderful prediction record he has. Nice work. And, finally, page 6. it's solid.
KUDOs
Mary Beth's last-minute work (as it was supposed to be) was excellent. Her post-election story was well written, had several quotes and had excellent information. So, she's in the pot again Well done, thanks!

3 comments:

SoTexEditor said...

I understand that you are hurt sir. I want to do well every week, but I don't know how to motivate everyone to work hard. I feel like I have not done my best as editor-in-chief and I think I now have to revery myself to just yelling at them... regardless of my recent hospitalization.

longtimehoggie said...

JC, you are doing a good job and this is a learning situation.

longtimehoggie said...

JC, you are doing a good job and this is a learning situation.