Critique of Friday edition of The Parthenon (9/26)

Critique of Friday edition of The Parthenon (9/26)

 

Front page:

The Parthenon staff continues to produce quality front pages. The background pictures are fantastic and the designer of the page picked good quotes from the stories inside the paper to draw the reader in. Quality work from the staff on the front page.

 

Second page:

The top story regarding student debt was well-written. The quality of sources is good, quality information, and statistics. The author mentioned a New York Times article in the story, but did not mention the date. That could be important to a reader who may want to take a look at that article. Other than an unnecessary sentence that could be combined with the previous sentence and would flow a little better. The bottom story was about a salsa dancing event held at Marshall. Overall it is a pretty good story, but it failed to mention the date of the event. The author got a variety of sources including one of the professional dancers at the event, one of the organizers of the event and students who attended the event.  The author could have added information about what the dance is and where salsa originated from, etc.

The photos on the page were pretty good. A couple of them were still shots and could have been more action based. The headlines and captions were good as well.

 

Third page:

The top story is about coach Holliday talking about the bye week for the football team that week. The story itself was okay. It had a few unnecessary phrases that should be deleted and/or change. But, the article doesn’t really tell the readers anything outside of the obvious that teams like bye weeks for: getting healthy and fixing any problems that may need addressed. I think a different angle could have been taken and maybe focus on why the offense has been successful or something of the like. It seems James Collier is doing a weekly column regarding Marshall football in the Friday edition of the paper, which is great as his columns have been well-written and informing. He clearly does his research in this piece like his others providing facts and statistics to back of the reason for his column, which was Marshall’s weak schedule in football this season. A missed punctuation mistake slipped by, but other than that the column was free of error and AP style mistakes. The hockey story on the page had a missing comma on the attendance numbers. The author also failed to mention that Evan Hazelett was president of the club when he was first mentioned in the article. The author could have provided more information on how Hazelett got the program started again. More information on this year’s team and the team in general would have been good as well and more sources maybe a player on the team or a coach.

The photos, captions and headlines are also good. Basic, but good. Sometimes a simple headline is all you need.

 

Fourth page:

The top story about the Huntington Music and Arts festival was a good piece. The time element of the lead needs to be moved as it was at the end of the lead and it needs to be closer to the verb. Other than that the article was informative and had a quality amount of sources. The second story on the page was about the Marching Thunder and its future trip to Pittsburgh last Sunday. The quality of sources is good and it was good to interview a member of the ensemble who is a Steelers fan and what it means to play during halftime of a Steelers’ game. There were no errors detected in the story. The final story on the page is about the new iPhone 6. It was a well-written piece, but it doesn’t answer the so what question. The author just got quotes about what the chair of the IT department thought of the iPhone 6 and the problems with the software Apple has had with it. Besides quoting a Marshall IT member the story doesn’t really connect to Marshall and seems like the article may have just been a space filler. A wire story may have been more appropriate. The author didn’t interview any students or faculty who may have purchased the phone.

The captions, photos and headlines are good on the page.

 

Fifth page:

The top story is about the Greek festival. The article was informative and well-written. The author should move the time of the festival towards the beginning of the article instead of the end.

The other two stories on the page (outside of a jump of the end of Collier’s column) are about 5ks. The one on the left was about a 5k for cancer. Overall, it was a good story, but could have used a quote or two from an organizer of the event. Also, the lead ended with a time element and should be moved and avoided if possible. The last sentence may have to be rewritten in order for that to work and flow well. The other 5k story is about the Marshall ROTC sponsor a 5k for a spinal cord disease: syringomyella. Like the other 5k story it could use more variety of sources, who set up the event for the ROTC, the head of the ROTC, more than just cadets helping out with the event. The story was free of AP style and grammar errors, etc. like the other stories on the page.

The headlines, photos and captions were of good quality as well.

 

Sixth page:

The back page of this edition is ads for churches in the area. As long as the ads were created by the churches editors should not have to worry about grammar, but should check anyway to be certain the ads are 100 percent correct. The page is well layed-out and is fair as it provides information on a number of churches from different denominations.

 

Overall thoughts:

Certainly one of the better issues I’ve critiqued thus far as far as AP style, grammar and punctuation and macro and micro issues goes. The staff did a very good job on this front in my opinion. Their captions, pictures, headlines and overall design continue to be good and well done. It is easy to see the grammar mistakes and AP style mistakes are disappearing in each of the issues.