Tuesday, September 15, 2009

From dry to wet in less than one week, Sept. 15 issue led to interesting KUDOs decision: Katrina Alejandro rocks


In spite of heat, rain and some unexpected lack of passion for journalism by some of our staffers, we were able to complete our fifth issue of the semester this past week. The Sept. 15 issue was full of informative and important stories about our university and community. That means that we accomplished one of the most important goals of a newspaper, covering and reporting issues about the community. Now, let's look at the issue page-by-page.

Page 1: Very well designed. Nice package on 1959 team. The type on the blue should have been at least .5 bigger and could have been 2 pt. bigger if needed. When we run type over screens of any color, we run the reverse type bigger than normal. If I have one complaint about this page is that it needed some decks. Also, the enrollment story at the top should have had a better lead. The "diez y sies" story headline is a "label" head.We need a real headline for every story. Finally, on the Zambrano story, I'm not sure what happened but we forgot to read it, I guess. There were some elements in the Zambrano story, particularly in the jump, where we just didn't read the story before it bot published. This is the job of the editor, managing editor and page editor to read every thing that goes in the page or paper. Every story must be read in its entirety. Let's set up a system that will make that work. Angela, please take care of this. One other note, a word of praise for Rebecca Cepeda for her work on the "Swine Flu" article. Well done for a freshman.

Page 2: This is one of the better Page 2 layouts in recent memory. the only problem, layoutwise how great the bottom half of the page looks. Nice "Focus on Us", nice "Fall fashion" story, wonderful "Tweet," but let's put more tweets and use twitter symbol. I like the UPD stuff and "Green Tip of the Week" also nice .

Page 3: Nice layout. Bumping photos, don't! Edit the ROTC story, just don't run it like it is turned in.

Page 4: Nice sports page with very good photo of Billy scoring on a 70-YARD TD RUN! Great photo, Katrina.

Page 5: good rain photos that kind of lost luster with the ads. Perhaps just running the spread on top and using the last two photos on the right for a story would have been better.

Page 6: A nice editorial page but evidence that no one reads this blog abounds. Keep your editorials, together. In other words, one on top of the other. Nice opinion pieces, but we have done better.

Page 7: Enjoyed this page. The photos were weak, especially the BAP. The stories were solid Camps News material.

Page 8: Strong and well-designed page in EspaƱol.

Overall, this was an excellent paper that showed we had some gaps in our organization. Many of the stories showed up late, too late. Also, we forgot about our new mantra - online rules and print follows. When we cover an event, the story must be written the next day, it must be put on the web the next day and then maybe rewritten for the print edition which comes out on Tuesday. Online rules, print follows.

As for KUDOs, there were plenty of worthy candidates. They include staffers like Amanda Marcum, Mary Beth Cleavelin,Edwin Vasquez, Claudia Garcia, Rebecca Cepeda, Mark Molina, Artie Leal and Tania Garcia. However, the work of Katrina Alejandro has been consistent through the year and her work in this issue was exemplary. Katrina had the story on the 1959 national championship team, the healthfest and her great photo of Billy made her the recipient of this week's KUDOs. Well done Katrina, you're on the pot.

2 comments:

Katrina M. Alejandro said...

i totally agree... i rock!! haha ((jk)) great job Dr. Flores keep it up :) you're doing a great job with teaching us how to be the best journalists

longtimehoggie said...

Katrina, it's easy to teach when you have students who want to learn