Un-Dam the Klamath

Students in the class liked:

1. The cover
2. The Klamath coverage
3. The editorial
4. The layout on page 14 and 15 (the Worrell and primate story)
5. The attempt to localize the wire
6. The photo that shows gorilla testicles
7. That the issue was heavy on stories about the arts
8. The lead on the cross country story
9. The lead on the Latinologues
10. The strong photos throughout the issue

They thought the issue fell short on:

1. The bigass headline on the sports story on page 10 over a dinky photo.
2. Two wire stories
3. Printing the lyrics for the Teradactyl story too small
4. The map came out too light
5. That the cover photo was credited to anonymous.

This issue felt tired.

You filled two full pages of a small issue with wire stories. Then devoted three more pages to puffy stories about activities Lumberjackers were involved in. And on top of that, a Lumberjack reporter wrote one of the opinion pieces in the Forum Section.

Part of the problem is that the term is almost over, it is one week before Thanksgiving break and you actually ARE tired. But you don't want that reflected in the paper.
On the upside, you ended November just shy of 22,000 page views even though it was short month and you didn't publish over Thanksgiving break. And there were a few good stories in this issue: Vegetarians want better food; Mid-semester budge cuts may restrict CSU access and the review/preview of the The Medium.

So here are some lessons you can learn from this issue:

Keep it local

The Klamath Dam is an important story, but I wasn't sure it belongs on the cover. Still, in class you presented a good argument that makes me question my initial reaction: Plenty of Save the Klamath bumper stickers in the HSU parking lot are evidence that your base readership cares about this issue and you wanted a story that could sit on the stands for two weeks.

Outline your story

The Klamath story was confusing. It needed a nut graph to tie all the different elements together.

Don't bury your lede

I found the lede for the Klamath story in the fourth column: Tucker wants to raft the Klamath from the headwaters to the sea on his son's 18th birthday. That gives the state a dozen year to blow the dam so that can happen.


Compare and Contrast

For the story on veggies in the school cafeteria what do other schools serve?




Don't forget history

The story about The Medium you needed to give your readers a short primer on Gian-Carlo Menotti. An Italian-American composer, he proved that opera could be successful on Broadway. According to the New York Times, The Medium ran for 211 performances after it debuted in 1946.

Ground your reader

Where the heck is Arcata's Green House? That was the location given in the headline for the Terrordactyls story, but the story only says that the concert took place in a house in downtown Arcata.

Don't blather on

That's what you did with the story about the primate club, which took way too many words to discuss a campus club that holds fundraisers for an ape rescue organization. Far more interesting was a piece of information you tossed out and then abandoned -- that cell phones kill apes.