Journalism at UMD

Comments on the 11/12/08 issue of the UMD Statesman

Thanks to Maija Morton for serving as Public Editor last week. We have more guests lined up to serve as Public Editor in coming weeks.

-Chris Julin

This week's paper has an engaging blend of breaking news and enterprise work. The U of M system's hiring freeze and a couple of noteworthy crime stories share space with feature stories about what students eat, growing up as an adopted kid, and UMD's research ship, the Blue Heron.

LOCAL IS GOOD

The Statesman can more consistently emphasize the impact of stories on its readers. The hiring freeze story is good but it takes a while to get around to spelling out what's likely to happen here at UMD because of the freeze. That information is in the story, but it's buried. To me that information is the news so it could play more prominently.

And on the question of local, I'm struck by the lack of local content in a couple of Statesman columns.

"Hollywood & Vine" usually focuses on celebrity gossip. This week it includes advice to letter writers and I found myself much more interested in the advice than the gossip. I don't imagine people picking up the Statesman to read about Tom Cruise's latest shenanigans, but I do imagine they'd pick it up to read a regular advice column that shines light on subjects that college-aged readers face every day. It's odd to have gossip and advice wedged together, so I suggest that the column go one way or the other. And, as noted, I cast a vote for advice.

UMD has a happening sports scene, so it puzzles me that the sports column focuses on professional basketball. If the Statesman is going to run regular sports columns wouldn't it make more sense to have them focus on the wealth of sports news right here on campus? I'd expect a UMD-related sports column to be quite popular.

FAVORITE LEAD

Liz Strawn caught my eye this week with the lead to her story about Alzheimer's.

UMD junior Jess Gasperini remembers when her great-grandma Millie Gasperini began to forget.

"She loved to cook, but sometimes she would leave the oven on," Gasperini said. "Since my great-grandpa Selmo was going blind, it was hard for them to live alone."

That's poignant without being maudlin. Such a nice lead. It gives me some real people to care about and be interested in, and it draws me into the story.

I was surprised to read in the next paragraph that President Reagan gets credit for single-handedly creating National Alzheimer's Disease Month. In reality, many other people were surely involved.

CLOSER FOCUS

Some other stories in this issue seem to call out for narrative leads.

This issue of the paper includes a few stories that are and colorful and interesting – once you read past the lead. In my estimation, these stories would be stronger if they started with a close focus on a person in the opening paragraph.

Here's a type of lead I see on several stories—

Papers are waiting to be written and textbooks are waiting to be read. The laundry bag is overflowing. Dirty dishes are piling up in the sink. These could be signs of laziness, or they could be signs of addiction. To Facebook. Across the country college students find themselves spending precious minutes – precious hours – on social networking Web sites like Facebook, and that's time that most students don't have to spare.

The writing is clever enough, but the overall effect remains rather generic and boring. Who is this story about? The focus is so big and fuzzy that I don't see any people in there.

Maybe our hypothetical story could start more like this.

It's 10:30 on a Tuesday night and Kassie Mueller is ignoring the statistics textbook that's perched on the coffee table. She's supposed to be getting ready for a test in the morning, but she's sitting on the couch in her living room tapping away on her laptop.

"Oh my god!" she hollers to her two roommates out in the kitchen. "Jessica broke up with Brent. Again!"

Posted by Chris at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Comments on the 11/12/08 issue of the UMD Statesman

Thanks much to Aaron Boyson for serving as Public Editor last week.

This week we welcome Maija Morton.

A little background - I am the new program director for 103.3 KUMD, the radio station in 130 Humanities. I was a community radio reporter in Minneapolis but am fresh from teaching journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Here is my take on this week’s paper.

Headlines
The lead story on the football team is a great choice for top story but the headline is rather cumbersome with another long headline on the back page. Front page headline could be a simple “No. 1!,� and let the picture or the writing tell the story. With the lead as the headline, it gave the whole story so I felt I could move on.

In broadcast we often stick with the subject, verb format, which eliminates passive voice and confusing sentence structure. On some stories there are too many words in the headlines. “Professor keeps promise� works and we can see the professor is a she with the picture above it labeled Helen. Also you can use present tense in the headline. “Professor goes to great lengths encouraging voter turnout.� Also there are too many prepositional phrases. Shorten tighten, and eliminate unnecessary words.

News Value
The football story has enormous news value to your readers. The next two stories I found most intriguing were the piece on rising costs of higher education and even more newsy, the student alcohol poisoning story buried on page four. Also the Deer hunting story seems misrepresented on the front page, at least the headline. I did not believe I had found the right story until I noticed the picture was repeated, another unusual choice.

Overall the paper has a great variety of stories from hard news to features stories. I think the Campus News pages had a nice variety to it, a little something for everyone. I like the diabetes story as well as the snowshoe story. I feel like I learned neat things about what other people on campus are doing and thinking about. Nice choices.

Leads
I thought the leads in the art section were the weakest. The first piece makes assumptions about the reader that may not be true and doesn’t indicate what the story is about. Plus it has too many unnecessary words. In the Wanda Gag story, the lead seems like it belongs as the last paragraph. What and where you will find the show are housekeeping details. “The work of famed Minnesota printmaker Wanda Gag comes to Tweed,� leaves the reader needing more information but gives a good start.

Front Page
The front page has less clutter and clear choices but news values could be reevaluated.
The stories on the front page appear to have more entertainment value than news value. While working to intrigue readers to pick up the paper and even open it, the choices undermine some of the more serious news stories buried in the paper.

-Maija Morton

Posted by Chris at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Comments on 11/5 issue of The Statesman

This week we are lucky to have another guest Public Editor. Prof. Aaron Boyson from UMD's Department of Communication offers these thoughts on the current issue of the paper.

What an honor to get to be the Public Editor for the paper on November 5th. It’s fantastic to get to absorb it and comment on such a weighty news day. It was obviously a tough paper to assemble, given the timing of the returns, printing restrictions, etc. I commend the staff for putting together a nice product. If you continue reading my comments, keep something in mind. I’m not a journalism professor. Some of my comments may be naïve or jargoned badly or both. Let me apologize for them in advance.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

A fuller paper is so nice. Here’s an anecdote on that. I had it at home on my dining room table. A couple of thirty-something neighbors came over and we were chatting. I referenced the paper in conversation, showed it to them, and they both said, “Wow, this looks good. I didn’t know their paper was this good.� I don’t know if advertising primarily determines the number of pages, but certainly consistently fuller papers will draw more readers over time. I think it was mainly the size that impressed them.

PAGE ONE

I was very unimpressed by the front page. Visually, it’s a mess. The banner competes too much with the primary headline in size and typeface similarity. I’ll second Professor Hatcher’s earlier angst about all-caps. The story deserves it, arguably, but in execution the banner and the lead headline are visually confounded.

As a whole, the front page is not clean and it has no flow. Pick any 2 or three major newspapers and set them down on a table to compare. I did the NY Times, USA Today, and the Star Tribune. I just used the top half. But I also compared the bottom halves as well. If your staff doesn’t do that regularly, perhaps you should.

To the side, the top of Hillary’s head is strangely cut off despite having plenty of column space.

Obama headline

Perhaps worst of all, given the gravity of the moment, your headline for the story about the Presidential election is, “America has answered.�

Really? It makes me feel like writing an SNL “Really� skit about it. Really? The first black president is elected in what everyone refers to as an “historic� election and that’s your headline? What else were we going to do? It was an election. Were we all waiting to see if someone hijacked the election? Surely you can do better than that. Could it be the most significant headline in the Statesman’s history?

Drawing readers inside

There are 3 headlines on the front page, not counting the teaser in the banner. Two have a lead with them. It would be hard to put less news on the front page. The column-inches dedicated to the result of the Presidential election is egregious. It wasn’t a tough sell. People are sure to be interested in the news. What you want them to do is READ the paper. It would be difficult for you to give me less reason to want to open it up and read it, given the content on the front page.

The only question raised and not answered (or teased for me) is how to make a calzone by myself. This the day after the general election? Strange. By comparison, on page 1 of November 4th’s NY Times, the top half had 3 stories (about 5 column-inches a piece) and 6 photos. On the bottom half, three more, and a split section of teaser stories. Depending on how one defines them, there are 11 teaser stories on the front page of the Times. They do a great job of throwing lots of darts at me to get me to open it up.

By contrast, the Statesman’s front-page makes me 1) compelled to pick it up because of the photo size 2) I get a little lost with my eyeballs, so I 3) focus, 4) I see that Barack has probably won, and then 5) I feel like putting it down.

There is little effort to get me to entertain the idea of opening it up. If I do, it’s because I’ve already learned to like the paper or because I’m seriously bored. It’s definitely not because the front-page persuaded me to.

INSIDE

Of course, I did open it up. And there are some very good things about it. And some odd things.

Missing students

On the odd side, I am flummoxed by the fact that there is not one story about student involvement in the election – either for the Presidential or state or local campaigns or just about voting. There are no pictures of students voting. You have shoved the most general, albeit relevant, voting results pertaining to UMD students into about 3 column-inches on page 3. That’s basically it.

I find this editorial accident or decision to be quite surprising. Students are continually being raked over the coals about not voting or being politically apathetic. Perhaps this paper contributes to apathy by simply not showing or talking about political participation of any kind. That’s disappointing to me.

Winterize the house

On the good side, I found the story about window insulation useful and timely. I had just spent $60 on packs of window insulation plastic, even though I’m not a student. Unfortunately, there was little effort by the reporter to empathize much with students. How many live in old houses? How many live in apartments? If I live in an apartment do I need to insulate my windows? If I live in an 80 year-old house in Duluth, is the Department of Energy’s estimate even relevant to me? You reported an average ($1,900 annually) that may have little meaning in Duluth. And it may have less meaning if you live in a really old home with old windows (which, by the way, I do). Still, the article was clear and compelling and I enjoyed it.

Cropping

Someone at the paper clearly doesn’t like the top of people’s heads. Mr. Jackson Hart lost his as well, on page 2. Can’t figure this out.

Sports

I love the sports coverage. Generally the articles are well-written and I like being able to flip to the back to get some results. The sports reporting is sadly reactive, however. The UMD football team is playing this Saturday to go 11-0. That fact is shoved into the bottom graph of a small story on page 26. If I were a football player, I’d be insulted. What more do they have to do to earn coverage? Isn’t a story about the upcoming game appropriate? They basically field the same players as last year, I think, but are somehow undefeated? There is much to write about, either in review of the season or in anticipation of Winona State or the playoffs.

THIS WEEK'S FAVORITES

Favorite line – David Cowardin

An hour passed and Burmis had yet to feel a reply to his careful jigging.

Favorite headline – Meghan Buttler

A concert worth coming out for

Favorite story – Cory Claeson

Student Executive Board is now a reality at KUMD

Favorite lead – David Buckner

“By the time doors to the Romano Gym opened a few minutes after 4 p.m. on Monday, a line of over 3 thousand people had formed from the gym doors through the Weber Music Hall.�

Favorite photo – David Cowardin

The Walleye

SUGGESTIONS

1) Registration issues – I am constantly annoyed with the print quality of the paper. It’s 2008, and the color registration and bleeding problems that routinely plague the paper make me feel like I’m holding something cheap from 1963. This may be an expensive problem to fix, but I have to say it. I’m sure it has a measurably negative effect on impressions of the paper.

2) Kill the Top 10 List - Seriously, is anything more hackneyed than a top 10 list? Maybe the reason I seldom read this or find it funny when I do is because the “medium� is stale. I strongly suggest promoting its burial, celebrating its last appearance, and then burying it deep in the waste-bin
of humorous ideas. Certainly there is another way to be funny that will appeal more to your readers. Maybe it's just me. I started to write a top 10 list of the reasons why to kill it, but it wasn’t worth reading.

3) Tease me – Fill page 1 with news, not with size, and give me a dozen reasons to open it up.

4) Fewer words, more data – When reporting use more data and use it more adroitly. But when you choose to, be empathetic with student audiences. The window insulation story I mentioned already exemplifies this point. But so does the “stress� story on page 6. Why not report on how many students seek treatment for depression or stress at UMD? I think Northerners suffer more from this problem in October and in winter because of daylight issues. So why use an (unattributed) “article� on college depression as evidence?

5) Proactive sports reporting – No question I can use the Statesman to stay informed about scores and upcoming games. But I cannot use it well to give me a reason to attend activities. It’s more reactive than proactive. Nothing makes this clearer than the point I raised earlier about the upcoming football game.

6) UMD student life - More “human interest� beats about what it’s like to be a student at UMD, both intellectually and recreationally. At the risk of ranting about it, I am deeply troubled that no journalist or editor thought it was important enough to cover student political action for this paper. That’s not just bad, it’s arguably antithetical to the purpose of having a newspaper in the first place.

-Aaron R. Boyson

Posted by Chris at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)