You got through another tough year. While it is tradition to not critique the last issue, there is no law against my telling you that you produced a big issue filled with substantial, relevant stories.
Okay, now I can slam the previous issue.
Problem #1: News judgment.
The big story is the one that immediately concerns students. That's the question of how they can afford college. You placed that under the fold on page three and made Take Back the Night the cover story. While sexualized violence is an important issue, the event is held every year.
Problem #2: Wordiness
You need to tighten your writing. Look at the lede on the affordable college story:
The "American Dream" has seemingly become a far cry from apple pies and baseball game. For college students, education once was inexpensive in California, but it has become almost impossible to afford.
Here's what tightening does:
College education once was inexpensive in California. Now few can afford it.
In comparison, you had some nice tight stories on the upcoming special election and whale watching, both done by the same person.
Problem #3: Ask, "what's my story?"
That's what you needed to do with the college affordability piece. At least that's what readers think the story is about until you introduce them to Johanna Bradfield. She got a great tax deduction because she married her same sex partner. But the federal government doesn't recognize same sex marriages and this discrepancy isn't addressed in the story, so it becomes confusing and ends up distracting from the point of the story, which is college affordability.
And you start the dam story by telling readers that a battle is being waged along the Klamath River. But then you fail to give readers a battle. Instead you have consensus that the dams should come down, but some dissatisfaction about the means and timing for doing so.
You also missed the story in the article about KMUD. Here is a community station in the middle of nowhere in the heart of marijuana country. But you wrote it as if its just another community radio station. The problem was one of conflict. As someone who volunteers at the station and has a radio show on it, you failed to see it from the perspective of an outsider. At the least, you needed a disclaimer that you work at the station. But someone else should have reported and written this story.
Problem #4: When covering an event, the event is not the story.
Understand the difference between the news angle and the news. The news angle is the excuse for doing a story you want to do, or a reason you can explain to the reader why you are doing the story now. So you need to find the story when going to an event like SLAMfest. Because readers don't care about an event they didn't go to.
You had the same problem with the profile of the Entrepeneurship Club. Readers don't care about a club. You have to make them care about the people behind the club or something super interesting the club does. But you did neither in this story.
Problem #5: Overkill.
Okay, so you should have put a "paid advertisement" tag on top of the holocaust denial ad. You decided not to allow it to run again. You welcomed comments and found space for many of the letters and referred readers to the rest of the online. But to say that the Lumberjack made a "horrible" mistake went a little overboard.
Problem #6: You need to question the answers to the questions you ask
The profile of Megan Rolland was a nice job and has a nice lede. But you need to ask "how?" and "why?" all the time.
She said: "Back at home when you were that young you couldn't do any other sports but cross country." Why?
You say: At the level Rolland is running and competing at, it starts to affect the body. How does it affect her body? Exactly what hurts?
And where will the Nationals take place.
Nitpicky stuff:
- Don't use "according to" except for data you didn't collect yourself. It signals to readers that you have reason to doubt the information.
- Keep your paragraphs short. The college affordability story was filled with paragraphs that were too long.
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