Hindsight, Feb. 5, 2020

The weekly critique of The Doane Owl and Doaneline

Praises:

Design:

Decent design on most pages.

I noticed that you’ve learned quite a bit during the school year. Example: We used to separate the headlines from the stores by placing art — photos and graphics — between the headline and the story. We’re not doing that anymore. Fantastic.

Also, rarely do I see artwork at the bottom of legs of text, another design no-no. Excellent.

At least some pages are 1/3rd art.

And a few have dominant art.

We also do a better job of scattering art this week than last.

Headline of the Week: StuCo walks the talk. Clever.

Visuals:

Nice basketball flag photo, but is this the story we should promote in the flag since the team sucks this year?

Good photo illustrating the stickers story by Nishesh Yadav.

I like Nish’s Bingo graphic. Nice work.

Love the close-up shot of the tattoo by Bailey Roberts. Excellent.

Hey, we have a new ad!!! Hallelujah!

Photo of the Week: Tattoo by Bailey Roberts. Why? Because it’s a good close-up shot, something we fail to shoot often.

Graphic of the Week: Bingo by Nishesh Yadav.

Writing:

Tremendous story from Bailey Roberts about Coronavirus. We even beat the national news on this story. At first glance, I didn’t know why we were writing about a camp in Ashland, but I think it’s close enough for us to report on it. After all, it does bring the dreaded disease inside Nebraska borders.

Excellent lede by Bailey on her Coronavirus story, too.

Two P. 1 stories from Bailey Roberts. Exceptional work. Keep it up.

Thanks to John Celesky for writing about the controversy surrounding the Super Bowl halftime show.

Kudos to Kate Weinandt for telling us about Rachel Czerny’s promotion.

BTW, three stories, count ’em, three, from Kate Weinandt. Outstanding.

Fun story from Caitlyn Nelson on stickers. Good package with photos and graphics.

I liked Bailey Roberts’s column.

I also like the columns of Caitlyn Nelson and Stephanie Hoshor.

Josh Bundy contributed three much-appreciated pieces.

And Nishesh Yadav, in addition to shooting photos and assembling graphics, found the time to write a couple of sports stories. Good work.

Lede of the Week: Camp Ashland will soon be used as a quarantine site for people who are at risk of having Coronavirus. — Bailey Roberts. In 19 words, she sums it all up in a classic hard news summary lede.

Problems:

Design:

A few pages are too gray. They need more — and better — art. All pages should be 1/3rd art. All must have a dominant art element.

The headline for the top story on P. 1 is way too small. And too long. Try: Nebraks to host Coronavirus carriers. Then increase the type’s point size.

I’ve put this in every Hindsight but apparently no one reads it or cares. We fail each week to provide headline hierarchy for the readers. The stories at the top should get bigger, bolder headlines than those at the bottom. Tell readers by the size and boldness of the headline what they should read first.

Cutlines and photo credits should not extend beyond the photo or graphic they serve. In some cases, they do.

Suggested headline for tattoo column: Permanent reminder/of a temporary feeling :-)

Why do we have so much wasted space on the Sports page about Athlete of the Week? Is someone paying for all that space? If not, move the ad down and use that space for a brief or short story or something.

Visuals:

Not nearly enough local visuals.

The locator map on P. 1 is close to worthless. It needs to focus much more on the area between Crete and Ashland. Who cares about all of Nebraska? We don’t need to see Chadron or Ainsworth? We need to see Crete and Ashland. Be more specific.

Why would we run photos that are just slightly larger than postage stamps? What’s the point? If we have a good Coronavirus photo, let’s run it — and run it large. Or get a microscopic shot of the virus itself and play it big on P. 1 by telling people this is the tiny, little thing that’s killed more than 700. And it could be coming to Nebraska.

Avoid widows in cutlines. Widows are single words on one line of a cutline. Either add more info or, better yet, cut to avoid the widow.

Thanks for trying to put together a graphic for the Iowa caucus problem, John, but the graphic fails to compel. I, too, would have a question mark floating inside my head if a donkey was dangling above me.

Crop photos, please. The photo of Jimmy Nguyen contains inches of wasted space that we could put to better use.

Why did the tennis photo turn out so blue?

Writing:

Omit needless words. Example: In the near future = soon. At this time = now. Or omit “at this time.” If we omit needless words, “To help make an impact to replenish …” becomes “to replenish the blood supply, the Doane University Blood Drive will begin at 10 a.m. Wednesday.”

Avoid “there have been,” “there were,” “there was,” etc., constructions.

Lede with the news, not the time element. The time element is rarely the news. Example: Six sex offenses have been reported at Doane University in the past six months.

Also, on the sex offenses story, the questions readers probably would ask are: Are six offenses a lot? How does that compare to last year? Or previous years? Is this a problem that needs to be addressed by the college or community? What can I do to protect myself? etc. We need to answer those questions for our readers.

Place attribution at the end of the first quoted sentence.

Kate Weinandt already knows this, but for the edification of others: When you write a localization, you must tell readers what local people are saying or doing about the issue. We fail to do that in the Iowa caucus story. Because of that, this story fails to tell our readers anything they didn’t already know.

Avoid burying the lede. Example: The importance of the Society of Women Engineers beginning a chapter at Doane is because women engineers now have an organization that’s for them. So, the last few grafs of the story should be moved much higher because, well, they contain the main point of the story.

Avoid printing boring quotes that you often find in mission statements or handbooks. Our quotes should jump off the page, not lay there, congealed in boredom.

Another instance of burying the lede: What did StuCo learn during their walk? We don’t know from reading the story. OK, we get an idea in the last column, but readers shouldn’t have to read that far to understand what StuCo learned. That’s the news.

I like Caitlyn Nelson’s lede on the stickers story, but I think it can be improved. Let me give it a try:

Doane students are stuck on stickers.

They use them to start conversations.

They plaster them on laptops and water bottles to express themselves.

To put it mildy, students have become attached to stickers.

The next graf, then, would be a quote from a student, not about Redbubble. Redbubble may be a part of the story and can be added later, but the interesting info about this story is the students, their stickers and how they use them.

Fill holes in stories. Example: we say a “few” Doane students enjoyed Doane Night at the Brewhouse. We fail to say how many is a “few.” Look, if there were not that many, we could count them. Also, we tell the readers that prizes could be won, but we never said who won the big prize, a TV. Why not? That’s a question readers will ask. And we can’t answer it.

Split compound sentences into two sentences. It makes it easier to read.

Use fewer -ing words. Example: “Those who came were visibly enjoying themselves,” becomes … Those present enjoyed listening to songs …

Avoid using the word “unique” unless something is one of a kind. Doane Night Bingo is not “unique.” Bingo games can be found almost anywhere.

Write in active, not passive, voice. Example: The DJ interacted with and cracked jokes for students.

I like the Super Bowl commercial column, but it would fit better on Doaneline, where we might be able to show the ads, or at least short clips of them.

Avoid the unintended repetition of words. Example: The men’s tennis team looks to defend its conference championship from last year while the women hope … not look.

Most 38-word sentences are difficult to read. Break them into two sentences.

Style:

Numbers below 10 should be spelled. Above 10, express them as numerals.

Use because of to denote cause/effect. Use “due to” to denote arrivals/departures.

No need to give someone two titles. Example: Nurse Kelly Jirovec, director of student health services. Just Kelly Jirovec, student health services director, … would suffice.

In sports scores, the winning number goes first.

Grammar:

Omit most adverbs — you know, those words that end in -ly. Such as visibly, competitively, etc.

A team is a singular noun. It requires the singular pronoun, it, not they.

You don’t “open up” anything. You just “open” it.

Doaneline:

The blogs posted are not Beat Reporting blogs. They are Multiplatform Journalism blogs. Why do we misidentify them?

Where are the Beat Reporting blogs? They should be included in the list of blogs.