Hindsight, Sept. 4, 2018

David Swartzlander
Sep 8, 2018 · 10 min read

The weekly critique of The Doane Owl and Doaneline

Praises:

I love that we experimented with a different look on P. 1. Even though the execution failed, I applaud you for experimenting in an attempt to improve the look of the paper

I’m glad we did a story on the house parties. Thanks, Grayson.

Happy we wrote the enrollment failure story. Good work again, Grayson.

Love the enrollment graphic. Thanks, Cole.

A couple of suggestions:

Should we check the attendance later in the semester or year of StuCo representatives — especially if StuCo is making attendance more lenient? Has there been an issue? Why make this change? The same with the provision about two-thirds of senators to fill a vacant position. Why make that change? Issue?

I see the stopnshop ad is much larger. Glad to see that. Were we running it too small in the previous two issues?

I’m heartened to read that students believe it was important to write the story of Mady Vogel’s fake ID. To me, that shows maturity and that students recognize the need for responsibility. I don’t mean to pick on Ms. Vogel, but the irony of the story is that she won election, in part, because her opponent shotgunned a beer in the StuCo office, in violation of university policy. And now she’s caught with a fake ID? Unfortunately, we refer in the story to the “Renshaw controversy” but fail to say who say who Renshaw is or what the controversy was. We need to provide background, even if it’s only a sentence. Don’t expect readers — especially freshmen — to know what the Renshaw controversy was.

This next bit is not praise or a problem — just a rant by me. It concerns Professor McKercher. I realize some of you are in theater and absolutely love Professor McKercher, and I don’t blame you. I like the guy, too. But I disagree completely with his position on the Mady Vogel story. He’s quoted as saying that everyone fucks up, that it’s a personal story and he doubted that it was worth printing. “It was just a gotcha moment,” he said. No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t simply an honest mistake. It wasn’t simply someone walking out of a party absent-mindedly with an open container. Ms. Vogel planned to get a fake ID. She saved up money — what does it cost? $100? $200? — to buy a fake ID. She searched for and found a person to make the fake ID for her. And then she used it, by her account, more than once to procure alcohol when she knew what she was doing was illegal. That’s more than a making a mistake. That’s deliberate deception. And not from just anyone, but a person who asked the student body to vote for her because she was responsible and mature and could lead the student body and its governance. Prominent people make news. Ms. Vogel is prominent as the StuCo president. For the record, Doane Student Media refuses to write stories about people being MIP’d because that could be an honest mistake and because the entire paper would be filled with stories about MIP’d students. This is different. The only time the Owl has written about students receiving MIPs was when 19 of them were ticketed coming out of the Foxhole Tavern in Wilber. And we did that story because the editors decided that we should publicize that the tavern was allowing underage students to drink there, without checking IDs. We did not name the students.

Nice work by basic student Kate Weinandt telling readers about Tamara Tanner.

Also, good work from basic student Arcane Boles to profile Jocelyn Schock King.

And we can’t forget basic student Ethan Marker’s first appearance with an Owl byline. Good work. Happy to see that basic students provided the P. 5 content. Keep it up!

I absolutely love that we have had hard-hitting, provocative editorials this year. Keep it going — but make sure the editorials are supported by facts.

Thanks to Allison Priddy, Charlie Summervold and Peter Strobel for stepping up as columnists. Glad to see it.

Good story from EIC Cole Bauer on the tennis player from Spain.

I like that sports editor Clayton Anderson wrote a column. I think he should consider writing a column regularly. But we should label it as a column so that people understand it is opinion. Or Clayton should come up with a name for the column.

Thanks to basic writers Chandler Farnsworth and Kate Weinandt (again!) for helping to write the sports page. I especially liked the story of the two students who changed sports.

Problems:

What went wrong with the P. 1 experiment? Here are a few thoughts:

Above the fold is too dark

The box around the story and headline separates the package into two parts

The black-on-white headline jarringly separates the package

The body type face is swallowed by the darkness of the screen around it, making it too difficult to read. If you’re going to do that, you need to boldface the type and bump it up a point or two. Remember, form should follow function. The whole purpose of a newspaper is to get people to read the stories (other than selling ads, of course).

How could the package have been salvaged? We’d have to play with it, but here’s one thought: Rather than using reverse type for the whole story — that’s too much reverse type for readers, frankly — consider running the headline in reverse type on the beer bottle photo and running the story immediately below that photo — no box, no separation and without reverse type. The beer bottle photo sells the story. I have no idea what the photo behind the story shows. So the photo is lost as is the story. That’s the problem with printing on photos, especially in newspapers. The newsprint soaks up the ink. So when the ink hits the paper on the presses, the ink spreads and makes everything seem darker than it does on a computer screen. That’s called “dot gain.” While you may be able to do that in a magazine, it’s much more difficult on newsprint.

And what’s with the two-line banner hed on the main story? That’s like telling the entire story in the headline. Too many words in the headline. Plus, ordinance? Do you mean law? And the headline intimates there is a new law — a “stricter city ordinance.” But that’s inaccurate from my reading of the story. Perhaps I missed it, but I didn’t see any mention of a stricter ordinance — only that police are being more strict in enforcing current laws.

As for pull quotes, the IDs of the speakers are too small and difficult to read. Bump them up a point or two. Or BF them.

With the enrollment story, what’s the big deal? So we have 37 students fewer than the estimate. So what? Here’s the so what — that’s 37 X $43,000 or $1.6 million. So, I’m guessing that Doane’s budget was built on the estimate that it would have $1.6 million more than it now has. If that’s the case, is there a potential shortfall, again? And, if so, what cuts will be made, if any? Is there more land to sell, without or without prairie dogs?

We must attribute information. That’s not negotiable.

On the StuCo constitution update, what’s the impact for students? As a student, why would I vote for these changes? Or why would I oppose them?

Aren’t we tired of playing the Tau Sigma Zeta banner so large? I am.

We still write headlines too short. Fill the space. At the same time, be more economical when you write headlines. Then, maybe you won’t need two or three lines of a headline to tell a story.

On P. 3, the dominant art is Colin Kaepernick. It should be higher on the page.

The Kaepernick story and the social media piece are localizations. The locals should be at the top of the story, not buried in the fifth graf.

Is it me, or is the Kaepernick photo stretched? His face looks wider in the photo than I think it is.

Avoid placing pull quotes at the bottom of a leg of text. Use text wrap to embed the pull quote within the story.

I’m confused by the insurance story. Student athletes apparently did not have to have a primary insurer before? Doane paid for treatment of all the injuries before? The headline says the new policy will cost students money. How much? How much does Doane spend on insurance per year? Will this cut Doane’s insurance costs? A lot of unanswered questions here.

What the hell is wrong with P. 4 and 5? They look completely different from the rest of the paper. It looks as if they are 80 percent to 90 percent smaller, creating large margins.

I don’t get the point of the Brew House story. What’s the news? It reads like an ad to me. Additionally, the Brew House graphic is too small — tough to read.

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down needs to be on the editorial page. These are opinions of the editorial staff. It also looks amateurish. It needs polish — make it look professional.

Avoid placing photos at the bottom of legs of text.

If a had a quote from someone who clipped the toenails of mice for her first job, I’d somehow try to make that my lede. If that doesn’t grab a reader’s attention, nothing will.

We need a cutline telling us who the person is in the photo next to the Chorale Director story.

Avoid jumping inside stories, especially columns.

Why don’t we pair pull quotes with mug shots of the people who said/wrote them. I think that would be a good look. Try it to see.

The headline on the debate column should be rewritten to make more sense. How about: Insults thrive as discussion declines?

Avoid putting two lines of text into a column. That’s a widow. With sound editing, I’m sure we could shrink the story to fit in five columns, not six.

What is the dominant art on the sports page? All pages should have dominant art — something to draw the eyeballs of readers.

Why not include a map of Spain to show us from where Ignacio Morell hails?

Omit needless words.

Why are some bylines all uppercase while others are up and down? What’s our style? We need to be consistent.

I’m unsure about the point of the fan culture piece. Also, I question the statement that 80 percent of 1,100 Doane students are athletes. That would mean we have 880 athletes at Doane. I doubt that. I think it’s closer to 50 percent.

Ledes should say what the story is about.

Visuals:

What makes the beer bottle photo work is the closeness of the shot. The faces here don’t matter — as they usually do. It’s the bottles that are the story. Good work from Nishesh Yadav.

The photo of Strobel and his finger-shaped heart works because, again, it’s shot as a close-up. Thanks, Caitlyn Nelson.

Mugs need to be better cropped. We care about the faces in the mugs. We don’t care what’s written on someone’s shirt.

The photos appear dark and muddy. Lighten them or use photo editing techniques to sharpen contrast.

Decent graphic from Caitlyn on the discussion column.

The action photo of Ignacio Morell’s forehand is fine, but try, if possible, to get the ball in the photo. If we’re prepared, we should be able to stop the action of the ball coming off the racket. Another nice action photo of soccer player from Nishesh Yadav.

The fan photo offers little information to viewers. Faces are too small — smaller than a dime. Is the point to show fans or to show the emptiness of the stadium or court? If the point is to show how few people attend, this photo fails. If the point is to show the place is packed, this photo fails. Determine what the point of the photo is — what’s the point of the accompanying story — and get that shot.

Style:

What’s AP Style for events that happen within a week of publication? It’s not the date.

Grammar:

Singular nouns require singular pronouns. So, “the group was suspended because it missed …,” not they.

Punctuation goes inside the quotes.

Don’t abbreviate most words. If you mean maximum, say it, not max.

Doaneline:

Love the blood drive story. Excellent work, Chandler Farnsworth. Also, love the close-up of the needle. But couldn’t our own shooters get that shot? And the headline needs to be punchier: “Why students give blood” would work. We don’t need the date — it violates AP Style anyway. One more thing: The lede should be about Doane students, not about how many people would die without blood transfusions. That statistic is important and should be in the story, but the lede should be about Doane students giving blood.

David Swartzlander

Written by

Associate Professor of Practice in Journalism, Doane University, Crete, Ne.; media adviser for 19 years; 23 years toiled in daily newsrooms

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