Friday, September 4, 2009

KUDOs Sept. 1 issue

Our venture into social media via our Plan 21 Project is off to a great
start thanks to the efforts of the Football Online Reporting Team
(FORT, ha) for the Javelinas football opener last Saturday against nationally-ranked Delta (Miss.) State.

Behind the leadership of David Brott,
online editor, and the supervision of new journalism instructor Don
Fisher, the team was able to give us quarterly updates on the progress
of the game. Those updates included photos by ArtieLeal, quarterly narratives by Adrian Trevino, and game and summary reviews by Mark Molina. In addition, David Brott
downloaded quarterly stats. It was a good solid package. As a result,
our hits from last week went up from 50 the previous week to more than
500.
Well done FORT. And, to make it better, theJaveinas won, 28-17. Go Hogs!

As for the Sept. 21 issue, it was another strong effort for this early in the semester. The experience of staffers like Angela Palacios,
Jaime Gonzalez, Tania Garcia, Erika Hernandez, Carlos Alvarado, Edwin
Vasquez and Katrina Alejandro came through and the enthusiasm of new
staffers like AmandaMarcum, Mary Beth Cleavelin, Caludia Garcia and others really showed.

Page 1 - Nice reader at the top. Poor photo with it. SGA
election story well done. Too bad we could not promote it more. Mark's
game story was excellent effort. Lead photo great but not ours. Please
do not run photos that were not taken by our staffers.
We probably needed a mug of Upshaw. Hughes/Gines story well done. Teasers at bottom need to be fixed. Too many, too small. Chose 3 or 4 at most.

Page 2 - Nice teaser at top. Focus On Us weak. Weak photo. Weak play. Serna story solid and also good photo. Well done. Erika's column is "bitching." Ha. Bottom of page too great.

Page
3 - A very nice, very modular page. Lead BAP a little too far down the
page and was too dark. Every B&W photo must be lightened in Quark
or PhotoShop . Okay? the lead headline on the Blackboard story needed to
be bigger at top and smaller at bottom. We also needed info box
explaining whatBlackBoard truly is.....but not bad. Engineering story was well done. Lots of quotes and good info.

Pge 4 - Lead photo needed to be cropped. Girl eating popsicle cute but, not needed. Ice Cream social and music students stories were well done. James Guidry play was good but what was he doing? Not good! Jennifer sold lots of ads and they were pretty. Good job, Jennifer.

Page 5 - Can't read teaser. Needed to lighten backgroun. Flutist story well written and color helps here, but the Stop, listen in . . was hard to se.
This was a good idea. Let's play with it. Life Wellness picture very
good (good job), but tell my what it was? Why did they win. It needed
more info.

Page 6 - The lost page surfaces. Through no fault of
ours, the printer ran the wrong page, one from last week. We got 500
copies of the do-rights and it looks very good. Lots of good stuff on
this page. Amanda, wow! Jaime, double wow, wow! Claudia, excellent.
And, to boot, a good editorial by Jennifer, I believe.Laout is okay. It's modular. We need some letters to the editor. You guys are not controversial enough. Ha.

Page 7 - Sports page is good, not great. Nice story on top. Good use of archved photo of Vball girls. Jump needed to be in two columns and it doesn't look like body text. Is it? The charticle on the Javelina Game Day needs more info like season records, last week, etc. Can we do this?

Page
8 - This needed to be a photo spread. And, the headline at top needed
to be bigger, Bigger, BIGGER. Nice stories by both Edwin and Mary Beth
and good, strong photos by Amanda and Artie.

Overall, guys y gals, good job. A nice issue.

KUDOs....everyone, as usual did well. But this week we must give it to the Football Online Reporting Team. So, KUDOs to David Brott, Mark Molina, Adrian Trevion, Artie Leal, Amanda Marcum and Angela Palacios. Oh, give ol' Don Fisher a big ol' pat on the back. Well done.