Journalism at UMD

The paper looks great. You're taking some chances with your layout and design, switching things up, and the result is a newspaper that's eye-catching yet professional.

This week's front page collage is the most creative and daring I've seen for a while. The pig graphic on page 2 is a clever way to break up a big chunk of text when there's no obvious photo to tag to the story. A designer might have some suggestions for spiffing up the actual design of the front-page collage and the pig graphic, but I'm not a designer and I'm responding as a reader: These are both nice elements.

ENTERPRISE
I'm impressed by the enterprise reporting on a couple of the this week's stories.

Dayna Landgrebe's "Poster patrol" story came out of our meeting the previous week. The editors kicked around several ideas related to the story about the religious pamphleteer outside Kirby. Some of those ideas were only tangentially related to the original story: Who has a right to make speeches and carry signs on the campus of a public university? Are there limits? And, (Dayna's story) who decides which posters get hung on the walls?

This is a very nice example of enterprise reporting. The newsroom has to follow breaking stories - such as the man with his sign and the students shouting back at him. But so often the most interesting stories deal with questions that come up in response to, or in anticipation of an event. I noticed that during our meeting a week ago Dayna jotted down some notes as we discussed the free speech implications of the shouting-religious-guy story. Later in the week she returned to those notes and pulled a good story idea from them.

Emma Fromberg's H1N1 is a another good example of enterprise work, in this case forwarding a news story without waiting for something "new" to be handed to you. What are some of the institutional side effects of the H1N1 scare? Great question. There are a hundred small but relevant stories to tell about swine flu, and this is one of them.

SIDEBARS, GRAPHICS AND THE LIKE
The H1N1 story would be even stronger if it were two stories. As written it is essentially two stories written under one headline. One story is a straightforward update on H1N1 and UMD's official response to it. That's a worthy story. The enterprise story begins about halfway through: What's the student and faculty reaction to H1N1 been?

As it's presented this story is a bit confusing. The headline promises a tale of students skipping classes and blaming it on swine flu, but that subject doesn't come up until the sixth paragraph.

Imagine this as two stories.

One story could be a short breaking news piece with the latest info on swine flu and UMD's most recent announcements. The other story is an enterprise feature about the effect of H1N1 on student attendance (and faculty members' attendance policies). Presenting the story as two related pieces has two benefits: It's easier and more logical for readers, and it gives you more layout options, more ways to break up the page.

As a general rule I suggest that you look for opportunities to give readers sidebar stories or readable charts and graphics that augment your stories. For example, could the H1N1 story have a small graphic that lays out the latest numbers in a simple table? Once again, you serve readers by giving them information in a more digestible format, and you give yourselves more design elements to play with on the page.

THERE'S NEWS IN THE NEWS
My overall sense, as a reader, as a member of the UMD community, is that the Statesman is getting out there, doing some reporting, telling me stories and giving me news that I genuinely want to know about. I'm eager to pick up the next issue to see what's inside.

-Chris Julin