A Moment of Silence

Students in the class liked:

• The story on the moment of silence
• The info box on how the pres. candidates stand on immigration
• The Q&A
• The clear page numbers on the front cover
• The story on renters
• The completeness of the review of Ozomatli and !!!.
• The editorial

They didn't like:

• That the Lumberjack had dropped the ball on the cross-country meet
• The jumps on the Ozomatli story
• The lack of a photo essay
• The wrong date of the issue on the front page
• That the blue cover made it look like last week's issue.
• The typo on the mission statement.

Here is my take:

The day the new issue went up on the Web we hit an all time high of page views at 1727. The next day the site got another 1,119 which may be a second day high.

This was a nice looking issue and impressive for the first issue for a new staff. The quality of printing is terrific; the copy and graphics are crisp. The redesign is great, but try to vary the background colors of your covers. The blue makes this issue difficult to differentiate from the last issue. Also work at better contrasts for your masthead and for your heads, subheads and refers. The Lumberjack masthead was hard to read on this issue, and it was difficult to read the the page numbers on the refers in the last issue.

I sense that we have a staff of potentially strong writers; you understand the fundamentals, you don't have any problem interviewing people, and you can find good stories, but you struggle with execution. That's a good position to be in for the beginning of a new term. Here's what you need to work on:

You need to ENERGIZE your writing!

You dulled down interesting stories. You should do the opposite: Take potentially dull stories and turn them into fascinating reads.

One problem was that you started each story with a flat lede. Zero in on conflict and contrasts. Imagine your reader is flipping through and will read only the first sentence. Here is how a number of the stories began:

• Dressed in a black tank top and holey blue jeans, Jerilyn Gashi is an average-looking student at Humboldt State University.

• Humboldt State University is marching towards becoming a veteran-friendly campus by expanding services for past and present military servicewomen and men.

• Apartment complex residents in Arcata are not reaping the benefits of the free recycling program that the Arcata Garbage Company offers.

• If you go to the Humboldt County Animal Shelter, a squat u-shaped building by the Arcata airport in McKinleyville, Calif., you might be lucky enough to see a small black and white fox terrier with a brown face by the name of Pogo.

• Local animal rights activists who oppose the treatment of circus animals hope the circus won't be coming to town next year.

• Maddy McCann, a Humboldt State University geography junior, is just one of many students concerned about their rights as renters.

Try these things:

Go for good, hard, descriptive verbs.

Instead of: Gashi is an average looking student
Perhaps: Gashi blends in at HSU.

Instead of: Apartment residents are not reaping the benefits
Perhaps: Each week, conscientious renters haul boxfuls of used bottles and cans to the recycling center while their neighboring property owners toss their recycling out on their front curb.

Instead of: Local animal rights activists who oppose the treatment of circus animals hope the circus won't be coming to town next year.
Perhaps: When the circus hit town this month not everyone cheered.

2. Trim your lede like you would a fatty piece of meat.

You want it nice and lean. Although you want to avoid acronyms you can use one if it is instantly recognizable (such as HSU) and it can cut cumbersome syllables out of the lede. Leave out of your lead locations that the reader doesn't immediately need to know (Mckinleyville, Calif.) And leave for later, identifying information about a person that the reader can wait to find out (an HSU geography junior). You can also cut out all adverbs and undescriptive adjectives.

3. Ditch the lede altogether.

Forget that first stab at a lede in your early drafts and look for a better one somewhere else in the story. You can usually find it hiding in the middle of the story or near the end. For example:

The lede on the men's soccer story was buried in the last paragraph. It was the upcoming game against Chico, a main rival. Always move your stories forward if possible. Readers are more interested in the games they can still go to than the ones they missed or already saw.

The lede on the veteran's services story was Jenn Fusaro who the Navy trained as a sonar technician but who came out of the Navy without the skills needed to detect life's day-to-day obstacles.

The lede on the Ozomatli story was in the eighth paragraph of the jump: Jenny Diaz who drove four hours to see her daughter in the Marching Lumberjacks and got to see this crazy band and as well as one whose name she can't even say.

The lede on the cultural immersion program was either the building of the adobe senior center (third column) or the solar-operated refrigerator (fourth column.) That's because tangible things like a building or a refrigerator will grab readers more than intangibles, such as a cultural immersion program or broad terms, such as appropriate technology. And that brings me to my next Tip of the Week:

Show don't Tell

For a story about recycling you need to show the reader a pile of bottles and cans. For a story about renters rights, you need to show readers bad housing conditions -- a leaky roof, broken windows, moldy walls.
For a story about a Republicans on campus you have to show us someone who is shocked that Gashi is a Republican. Instead you had Gashi tell us that people are shocked.

Oh, wait. That story wasn't about Republicans on campus. It was about a moment of silence. Which brings me back to the subject of the lede and my next Tip of the Week.

Begin your story with the focus of the story. That speaks to clarity. Unless you intend to deceive your reader in your lede (what I call a sucker lede, since you sucker them in to believe the story is about the opposite of what it really is) you need to let them know the subject as soon as possible, in the first half of the first sentence if possible. But the story on the moment of silence doesn't get to the moment of silence until 10 sentences down, and in the second column. Even then, the story doesn't really address the moment of silence. Instead it seems to be about the process that was required to get the moment of silence enacted. And that brings me to my next Tip of the Week:

Focus your story on what the reader will care most about.

Readers don't care that Gashi had to petition Roland Richmond. Richmond would only be relevant to this story if he denied the petition. Instead this story should be about a moment of silence that will take place. So the most fitting format would be a man on street -- asking random students, faculty and staff if they will be on campus at 9:11 am on 9/11 and what they will think about in the 60 minutes of silence. What will this moment mean for real people? And that brings me to yet another Tip of the Week:

Focus your story around Real People not "official sources":

If your readers won't really care about how Roland Richmond feels, they certainly won't care about what Paul Mann, college spokesperson, thinks. His presence in a story is only appropriate when he has information vital to the story that you simply cannot get anywhere else. Rely on public relations people for general background, for getting pointed in the right direction, for getting in touch with the people you need to get in touch with and when it is the only way to get the information. Otherwise leave them out of your stories. They make you look lazy and they make your stories seem superficial.

The renters right story suffered from a similar problem. You focused it around the Associated Students president, a tenant's rights lawyer, a City Council candidate and a workshop attendee. You needed to take the reader into an apartment and talk with a screwed tenant.

Regardless what the focus is, every story needs a focus. That was the problem with the animal shelter story. I wasn't sure whether the focus was supposed to be people who work at the shelter or recidivist dogs at the shelter. Don't leave your reader guessing. And that brings me to my final Tip of the Week:

Don't leave the reader with unanswered questions

In the story on the circus:
How many and what types of animals are in the Carson and Barnes circus?


In the renter's rights story:
How exactly do California landlords have more rights than ever before?

In the men's soccer story:
Is Lyle Menk an up and coming star?


Did I say that was my final tip? I lied.


Don't underplay news angles.

They help draw in readers and keep their attention. In the veteran's services story you buried three potential news angles:

1. Despite a big budget cut, HSU is expanding veteran's services
2. The Veteran's Center will move to a new home in mid-October
3. There is a new club on campus for veterans

Watch your words

Use according to only for data you did not collect yourself. It implies that you don't trust the veracity of the information and why quote a source you doubt is telling you the truth?

Avoid adjectives that reflect your personal opinion: Freshman Gracie Gartrell set up the goal with an excellent down field pass...


And finally, expand your sourcing:

The Q&A was good, but an intro to a Q&A is as important as the Q&A. Turn it into a mini story of its own by reporting out -- find two people who know the interview subject well who could offer interesting perspectives on the person.


For the circus story you needed to talk to outside circus experts: Here in Humboldt County we have a world famous clown school in Dell 'Arte and I bet they would comment on a traditional animal circus versus the Cirque de Soleil model sans animals. And at HSU we have the Humboldt Circus, a made up of a bunch of publicity hungry amateur performers.