The Heat was "ON" and now the rains have come; KUDOS for Sept. 9 issue were "a little wet"

Well, we now have proof that God does read The South Texan. After more than 90 days of drought and a month of August with 10 dates with 100 degrees temperature or higher, the staff of The South Texan decided to do a package (feature story) on how the heat had impacted the area. Mary Beth Cleavlin did a wonderful story complete with sources and scientific data and Katrina Alejandro and Angela Palacios worked on doing a front page story with a jump to feature page 8 to make it look as enticing as possible. It was nice. The day the paper was delievered, it rained. I mean, it RAINED! More than 3 1/2 inches of rain fell that Sept. 10, most of it right on good ol' AMK. It was gratifying, however, to see student used our "HEAT WAVE" issue to cover themselves from the rain. It's enough to make a grown man cry! But, hey, after God saw our headline about the summer drought, he must have said, "Well let's just let it rain down there fellas. It's all fine. We'll take care of you." The downpours were needed and we thank God for little relief from the heat, not to mention the comic relief from those who reacted to our story while trying to escaped the rain.

Still, it was a good issue with plenty of readable and informative stories. Let's look at this issue, page-by-page.

Page 1: Katrina finally got the layout down with the burnt grass in from of College Hall as a backdrop and the headline worked, sort of. We could have done better, but this package, which jumped to page 8, worked well. Jacque Hutton's story on the Town Hall Round Table meeting was very informative. Good lead and plenty of good information and quotes. Story needed help, but that's what we have editors for....good job Jacque. Carlos' story on the Sabrios and Claudia's story on the new risk management leader were well done. Teasers at bottom look better but I still can't see the VBall photo and the maracas (they are maracas, right?) look like Indian pottery. We could have found something better than this for Hispanic Heritage. Specking of Hispanic Heritage, who is working on the "bug" for the upcoming features?

Page 2: Erika is the bomb! Really. Wow. She knows how to strengthen the bond with man. Yea. It's simple really feed us, love us, leave us along and pretty much we will be like loyal puppy dogs waiting for our next treat. But, excellent, Erika. You are getting better at this and this has syndication potential. Let me work on that on my time off. Theatre story was weak. We needed photo and a real story. We did not need a rewrite from a flier. Blotter was good. Let's develop this with a little better format. "Green Tip of the Week" well done. Nice Focus on Us page.

Page 3: Claudia tracked down the Cheech Marin story, good job. I would have suggested calling Cheech. Why did we not call him? Next time we are doing a story on a celebrity, we should try to make contact that celebrity. The Miss Hispanic Heritage story by Tania had a killer headline: "Hola Chica!" Que cute. Adolfo's story on the Poli Sci Pi Sigma Alpha chapter well done. Godd stories. Good campus news. A well-deisgned campus news page. KUDOs.

Page 4: Color on an inside page. Wow! Nice photo package on "Distant Light." Jumps well placed, but we always need to have some type of art with these many jumpbs. We should have planned this better. Nice page, for one that is inside. However, a suggestion. Let's make the color inside page our Best Campus news page and use the other black and white Campus News page for jumps. What do you think?

Page 5: This was a very newsy Campus News page and also in color. Yea! Excellent ROTC features. Where did you find this guy, Angela? His story on the Victory Cannon and the new commander were excellent. Let's use him some more. Let's talk about potential stories. Only thing bad here was the lead art on the "topping out" lunch. Surely, there was something "topped out." That was the photo we needed. Still, nice page.

Page 6: This ed-ops page was a little dull. Still, it had some poignant commentary by Nndy and Sabrina and Angela had a good column on how an editorial page works. Also, editorial were well done. A suggestion: let's keep our editorial together on this page. Claudia, you are doing a good job designing this page but you need to develop your own style and look. That includes having a solid editorial cartoon and a letter's to the editor section. Let's see if you can generate some letters.

Page 7:Sports page is weak. We need big headlines and big photos.Photo by Artie, good! Volleyball story was very well done. Where are volleyball photos?

Page 8: An interesting features page, to say, the least. Good effort on graphics, but we can do better. Sabrina's photo was excellent.

So, who gets KUDOs? Well, we can't go wroing with the rainmaker. KUDOs goes to Mary Beth Cleavelin. Great story, good sources and well designed. Good job Mary Beth. We missed you last spring semester. So, you're on the pot for $100.