Hindsight, May 1, 2019

The last weekly critique of The Doane Owl and Doaneline for the 2018–19 academic year

Congratulations to all of the new staff for publishing a readable, newsy paper. You’ve survived your first paper! I know it probably took longer than you thought it would, but as you become more experienced, you will get quicker at performing the tasks of reporting, writing, editing, shooting and designing. For now, relish in creating your first paper. A job well done. I’ll hand out lavish praises and, I hope, constructive criticism below.

Praises

Design:

P. 1 is fairly well designed. Decent job.

I like the deck on the blackface story: Posted photo of students in blackface creates backlash.

P. 2 is a little gray, but the donation graf and the mug shots of the student reactions help to lighten the page.

P. 3 also is well designed, though we’ll need to focus on a few small problems below.

P. 4 looks good as does P. 5. Good work.

Sports page is appealing with good action shots.

Headline of the Week: Library director put on leave

Visuals:

I’m glad we got a shot of the blackface photo. We absolutely needed to have that. And we ran it well. I just wish it had been in better focus.

I’m on board with the photos of the 10 StuCo members. Excellent work. Glad we got them. And happy we packaged them so well.

Exceptional donation graphic from Nishesh Yadav. Fine work.

I’m thrilled with how we packaged the student reactions to the blackface photo. That’s professional-looking work. Outstanding job.

Glad we could put together an audit checklist. Nice work, Nish.

And another fine graphic from Nish on students and their news sources.

Outstanding Thumbs Up, Down for this issue. I like that we explain the thought process.

Two good sports photos of tennis, by Nish, and track, from Caitlyn. That spices up the sports page well.

Graphic of the Week: Student donations by Nishesh Yadav.

Photo of the Week: Track by Caitlyn Nelson.

Writing:

Hats off and a thousand thank yous to Lauren Wagner and Chandler Farnsworth (whose byline was inadvertently left off the blackface story) for all their hard work in nailing that story. Outstanding.

Also, Lauren did a fine job chronicling the StuCo election.

Caitlyn Nelson wrote a good piece about David Sutera leaving Doane.

Lauren Wagner — again?—informs us about seniors donating money. Who would have thought more than half would donate?

Thanks to Allison Priddy for telling us that the Student Affairs office has several vacancies. Hmmm, I wonder why?

Glad we could find room for the public records story written by Allison.

And even the ol’ EIC gets involved, penning a story about students and their news sources.

Kellen Korinek once again does stellar work on a review. And I like the logo.

Thanks to Allison Priddy for detailing the four common ways that students cheat. :-)

Remarkable editorial. Keep ’em coming.

The only thing I would add to the Owl staff letter to the editor is this: Always question authority.

A letter to the editor means at least someone is reading your stuff. That’s good.

Peter Strobel reacted quickly to the blackface story. Kudos to him.

And I couldn’t agree more with CJ Keene’s opinion about StuCo. Well done.

How broke now is Clayton Anderson after he bought the entire enrollment of Doane University a brewski at the Eagles Club. Good thing he has a job to recoup that outlay.

Clayton was a busy camper this week, writing two major sports stories. Of the two, the track piece stands out.

Shooting photos and making graphics wasn’t enough for Nishesh Yadav. He decided to write a story as well. With a kick-ass lede.

Lede of the Week: Twenty student-athletes were recognized for being the most valuable players on their respective teams on Monday night at the Doane Athletics Awards Ceremony in Heckman Auditorium. Nothing fancy. Just simple storytelling that makes the point in the first graf.

Problems:

Design:

Avoid running a mug shot of a professor next to 10 StuCo mugs. It looks as if the prof has been elected to StuCo.

Avoid bumped heds, as we have on P. 2.

I’m unsure what the graphic on P. 2 with a question mark over a face is supposed to say. I’d cut it. Or find another graphic to make your point.

Headlines should square off with the border of the piece. Example: The 1920s blackface reaction piece. The headline starts beyond the photos of the students. It shouldn’t.

Watching your spacing. On P. 3, the headline and the deck on the bookstore story are way too close. So are the body copy and the cutline on P. 3.

And we need a better headline on that story. Bookstore backlash fails to tell people what the story is about. In general, headlines should be five-seven words long. They should include a noun and a verb, preferably an active verb. So try: Online bookstore/faces student backlash — or something like that.

While I like the review logo, I’d remove the two stars that surround the word, review. It makes it look as if we’re giving a movie seven stars, not five.

In designing pull quotes, the quote should align with the top and bottom of the photo. Or else it should be centered. But the pull quote should not extend above or below the photo. In other words, square it off.

Use your grid. Keene’s column looks strung out because, well, it is. We tried to string five columns over six. It didn’t work. Just follow your gird.

Tennis photo needs more cropping. Focus on the player.

Consider making all decks one-column.

On sports, the dominant art is the track photo. Yet the photo starts just above the fold. When possible, place your dominant art element as high on the page as possible.

Tennis deck needs to be rewritten. How about: Despite Midland loss/Doane men win/tennis championship

What if we placed thin rules at the top and the bottom of pull quotes. Would that look better?

Is the weekly horoscope set in a different typeface than our body copy? Is there a reason for that?

Visuals:

I’m glad we included a checklist on the public records story, but it looks pixilated. Or is that just me?

Can we move Thumbs Up/Down to an opinion page. That’s where it belongs.

We could tighten the track photo as well by cutting out the bystander on the right side of the frame.

The track cutline needs to run under the track photo, not just under half of it. The cutline should start at the left border of the photo and continue to the right.

Writing:

Avoid to be verbs as much as possible. Example: Instead of “will be leaving…” write “will leave…” Saves space and moves the story forward quicker.

Is Sutera the only prof leaving? In other words, why focus on him if others are moving as well?

In reported speech, all verbs in a sentence must take the same tense as the attributive verb. Example: Petr said these three positions are posted and are each … This is an example of reported speech. Because said is the controlling verb, the other verbs must be past tense as well: Petr said these three positions were posted and were …

Omit needless words.

Not all the documents sought in the audit checklist were federal level, so we can’t use FOIA. Example, the cafe inspections are done by the state.

Write in third person, unless you’re writing a column. Avoid we, us, etc.,

Do we have any newsworthy results from the records audit? We fail to say.

Avoid negatives when positive words work. Example: “…a majority of students don’t keep up …” Instead, try: “… a majority of students fail to keep up …”

Avoid adverbs.

When we introduce someone in a story, we must say who that person is. We must identify using title, age, address, claim to fame, etc.

In Thumbs Up, we reference the Sheldon Shitshow but we fail to write a story or a brief about it. To fill readers in, you must write something about it. Otherwise, it’s an inside joke that not everyone will understand. And we want to be inclusive, not exclusive.

Since we reference the faculty handbook in the editorial about academic freedom, we probably should quote it in the editorial.

Avoid leading a story or a column with the time element.

Zach Renshaw’s column talks about the Board of Trustees voting on a proposal to commit to 100 percent renewable energy. Did the board do that? We should folo with a news story.

If you write about “men’s tennis,” you’re writing about the history of tennis at Doane. About individual teams, you need to write: the men’s tennis team …

Avoid writing a story in chronological style. In other words, don’t bury the news. In the athletic awards story, we fail to say what’s newsworthy until the ninth graf.

Style:

In headlines, always use numerals. Example: 10, not ten.

Never start any sentence, even a cutline, with a numeral.

Titles are lowercase unless used with a person’s name.

Adviser is with an e, not an o.

Avoid courtesy titles such as Dr. Jacque Carter. No, he’s Jacque Carter. Or President Jacque Carter. But not Dr. Jacque Carter.

What’s sports style on tennis matches?

When referring to people, you must on first reference print the entire name and ID, not just first names.

Grammar:

What word is premiers? I think we mean premieres in the P. 4 headline — though that’s not what we wrote.

What word is recieve? I think we mean receive, right? We misspelled it in a cutline.

The possessive of Doane University is Doane University’s, not universities.

Doaneline:

Watch the Breaking News ticker. The news from May 3 about the academic freedom story is now old. It’s being updated today. News can be breaking only for a day or two, then we need to move on.

On our featured stories, the lede story should not be Sutera leaving. It should be the academic freedom story. That should be the first thing anyone sees when they click on Doaneline.

Check out four new(er) multimedia efforts on Doaneline:

Reflections from senior athletes

What makes a good student and professor

StuCo elections

Denim Day

Also, check out the audience participation piece on the Capstone project. The grades from the students, for the most part, vary from the Capstone students’ grades.