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.

President Barack Obama

When you told me that you were planning on delaying publication of the issue until early Wednesday morning in order to report the election results I thought the plan had disaster written all over it.

But when I picked up the paper Wednesday, I found an impressive looking issue filled with good writing and the most accurate, most timely results of any paper in Humboldt County. You outreported the Times-Standard and Eureka Reporter.

There was only one medium-sized problem in this issue and a few minor problems. You were right to group the election stories in the middle of the issue around the center spread. But the most important story aside from the election was clearly your scoop on Richmond's retreat over the University Center. That you chose the skate park as the lead story on page three made no sense.

Another problem was the unfortunate typo on the Center Spread. I assume that when you headlined the proposition story Yay on 8, Nay on 4, you meant Yae on 8, Nae on 4 and that you did not mean to cheer on the passage of a law that denies gay people the right to marry in California.

The third problem was that although the center spread looked great and read great, you placed the stories in the wrong order. You should have lead the section with the overview of the presidential election. The students in KBR should be second. After that the story on Prop. 8, followed by the city council election.

While both the soccer stories were good, it was confusing to read two stories that dealt with both men's and women's games. It would have been less confusing to have one story about the two women's games and one story about the two men's games.

Even though you reported a large number of stories on tight deadline, the stories were well written and beautifully edited. I saw no organizational problems and some stories carried the best ledes of the term:

The Humboldt Bay Brass Band filled Fulkerson Hall on Saturday with such rich tones that after each piece ended you could hear the sound resonate a few seconds longer.

The moment Obama was declared president-elect, the crowd partying at the Humboldt County Democratic Headquarters in Eureka exploded into cheers, threw their arms around one other and wiped a few tears of joy from their eyes.

If a soccer game lasted only 87 minutes, then the CSU Stanislaus Warriors would have been firmly in control of Sunday's match up.

If you happened to spend your Halloween evening at Redwood Bowl, you saw Humboldt State University's men's and women's soccer play rival Chico State. The night revolved around one goal, two bananas and some spirited name calling.

1.3 seconds is all it takes.
At least that's all it took for 49-year-old Tim 'Old School' Davidson to realize it was time to turn his life around.

Readers respond to quality, relevant coverage. So far, you racked up more than 11,000 page hits for the first 11 days of November, that's an average of 1,000 page views per day, a huge increase over previous months.

Your election effort made Humboldt Now:

Get out and vote

Online readership started out strong this term, then fell. But it climbed back with this issue. You ended October with more than 23,000 page hits which is close to the record. I think you will likely end the term at an all time high for monthly visits.

But you've been doing a great job with the print edition at the expense of the online edition. And that does a disservice to the readers who come to you over the Internet.

To begin with you have a broken link that is supposed to take readers to a PDF of the front page. It is unattractive and frustrates the reader who wants to check it out. Plus, the fact that that broken link has sat there several weeks tells your reader that you pay no attention to your online site. That's shabby.

Second, there are few if any photos on the Website. Instead, it is crowded headlines. Next term I would like to see the online presentation of stories take top priority.

The stories that fill the Lumberjack week to week are such an improvement over the content in past years that I've been lulled into a sense of complacency.

But lately your competition in the professional press has been covering stories you should have gotten: The Keeling report; the WASC accreditation, and the Dialogue on Race. You also missed out on other important stories: The departure of Professor of the Year Carolyn Ward; the visit and performance of a word-famous marimba player; the visit of a captain of a world-traveling Chinese Junk.


On the upside you gave your readers a good preview of the election and you were able to deliver another important story on tight deadline: That of the death of a student by suicide.

But some of the election preview stories were dry and the layout gray. While the summaries of the city council candidate positions was good, the layout for pages that focused on the local and state propositions was confusing and cluttered.

You also underplayed the story about the new dorms around the soccer field.

You always want your stories to have the Hey Marge effect. That's when someone reads your story in the morning while eating his Special K and yells out "Hey Marge, listen to this!" The story about the new dorms was your Hey Marge! story. But you buried it at the back of the issue.

Finally, beautiful job on the cover and editorial. And nice job of mixing some fun stories with Halloween themes with your election preview stories.