Family Pact

You designed a nice cover, and you did so at the last minute. It provided readers with multiple entry points. It attracts different types of readers. This was the second 24-page issue in a row. Since times are rough, you need to prepare for less space. So rethink how you use page 2. Your Mission Statement and contact information takes up a quarter of the page and your table of contents takes up half a page. You might want to use some of that valuable space for art or an article.

What your classmates liked:

• Nice crisp action photos
• The cover
• That the fact box on the Purim story was a Jewish Star
• That some pages had more than one story
  
• Use of pull quotes
• The story on Family Pact
• The center spread story on the speaker booed

What they did not like about this issue:

• The table of contents promised a photo essay but the issue didn't deliver it.
• Lousy photo for the climate change story
• Lack of photos of protesters for the center spread story
• Odd fact boxes on the sports stories.
• The lead on the budget story.
• Wrong sourcing on one story.
• Not enough info boxes
• Cover

You still need to work on your ledes. Many were wordy, boring and did little to inform the reader:

For the sixth year in a row, the California State University system is receiving more cuts to its budget.

Uncertainty is widespread regarding an off-campus budget retreat held Feb. 20 and whether or not open-meeting laws were violated.

Global climate may soon collapse due to Amazon deforestation.

California could lose federal funding for the Family Planning Access Care and Treatment (PACT) program unless it begins verifying the immigration status of its participants.

The International Cultural Festival offers HSU students a taste of 18 different countries and cultures.

So when writing your lead, ask yourself: What is this story about? And if the lede you wrote doesn't answer that question, look for the lede elsewhere in the story. It is probably hiding smack in the center of the story, at the very end or three paragraphs up from the end.

When your story deals with a big macro subject, like global warming, zero in on something the reader can understand for your lede. In the global warming story your lede might be that biofuel crops lead to deforestation. So even as people try to be more ecologically correct by going off petroleum, they end up decimating forests.

Avoid citing Paul Mann as a source

Make your passive sentences active.

Not: For the sixth year in a row, the California State University system is receiving more cuts to its budget
Instead: The state will cut the CSU budget for the sixth year in a row.

Not: The meeting was canceled without notice to the public.
Instead: The budget committee canceled the meeting and failed to give notice.

To make a passive sentence active, trying flipping it.

That will force you to identify the true noun and verb.


Info box tedious details.

In the budget story you tell your readers that fees will increase, that they skyrocketed since 200 and that there are 450,000 students in the system. You give us a bit of a timeline and assorted financial figures. Box all that data out. And graph the information as well.

Don't use the word "claimed."

It suggests you doubt the information, and why give your reader information you doubt?

Avoid citing Paul Mann as a source.

It makes your readers think you are lazy. If you try hard to speak to any other administrators and the road always leads to Paul Mann, let your readers know that.

Go for universals

In the story about Purim, understand that Purim is based on a biblical story about a Jewish woman, named Esther, who risked her life to save her oppressed people. So even if you aren't Jewish, you can identify as a woman. And even if you aren't a woman, you can identify if you are a member of an oppressed population. These are universal themes.


Don't forget the Nut!

When you have a story with multiple elements you need to summarize in a nut graph, all the elements that will be in the story. It is usually the second or third paragraph of the story and tells the reader why it will pay to read to the end. A good nut helps you organize a complicated story.

Tell your readers how they can take action

You could provide a box of names and email addresses for local legislators with the Family Pact story so that people could tell their lawmakers what they think.

Show don't tell

The cultural festival story needed all five senses -- sight, sound, smells. You needed to talk to someone who went last year and have the person describe the most interesting food he ate or the neatest thing he saw. Remember to focus on the micro not the macro. So instead of telling us about all the different cultures at the festival zero in on one or just a few of the most interesting.

Flip your story

In some cases, you wrote the entire story backwards. That's what you did with the Mayhem ensures piece. It isn't until the second page that you get to the mayhem.

You needed to flip the Jagun Fly story as well. The most interesting part of the story is that the author is a former HSU student who is now a successful playwright. That needed to be in the front of the story rather than the back.

Let's see some consistency on photos.

While I spotted great action shots in Sports, the photos for the international festival were terrible. And you missed a great opportunity for a graphic. Within the Jewish star for the Purim story you informed readers that the event would be at the Beth El temple. But you didn't tell them where that was. You could have created a quick Google map and put it inside the Jewish star.

Say what you mean

You start the editorial off with the word shit, which offends even my sensibilities and I am quite partial to the use of expletives when there is a reason to use them.
The gist of the editorial was in this paragraph: "Now, more than ever, we depend on each other to get out of this sink hole. If we are going to pull ourselves up out of this we have to change and adjust our perspectives."

The editorial seeks to unite but its first words are divisive. Remember, you speak for all students, those who might curse and those who would never. Speak a language they all can understand.

Don't bury your ledes

The lede for the story on Gracie Perez was in the third paragraph: Gracie Perez never cared about records. Good thing, because she breaks every one she comes up against.

The lede in the budget story was in the second column. To Beth Wilson, the thing that differentiates HSU is small class size and how professors know the names of their students. Budget cuts might make those things disappear.