Newspaper review from Colombia

So Ms Sackstein gave a copy of our newspaper to those at Colombia University and this is the review that they gave us:

Part 1: Overall.

Coverage: We received a 90/100, the Judge said that the newspaper needs to be more interesting "enterprising personality" needed. She said that we really need to localize most of our stories.

News: not too well, but received 40/50. We need to use more sources, give "previews" of upcoming news, and localize what is happening in WJPS. Also that most of the stories weren't timely enough.

Feature: 40/50 but needs a lot of improvement. She says we need more variety of topics, especially when it comes to people's interest. She suggests taking a poll on what people would want to read about ; get teachers more involved and ask if they have any stories to contribute.

Sports: 40/50, she says that the Sports Editor should start to establish connections with people who can keep up the latest in sports. She says we need to talk about what's actually happening in Physical Education class, and not just stories about world sports.

Opinion: 45/50. These pieces require personalization, more of an specific angle. We need to use less quotes and add a "masthead", develop our structure and avoid bylines.

Part 2: Writing and Editing

Basic Journalistic Principles: We need to work on sentence structure, titles, bylines and using more references. Also learning how to write in third person and overall style for each type of writing. The reviewer said that it would be more appropriate to use AP style in our writing.

All Stories: Doing well in research, but there's too much summarizing and usage of the Internet. More information from WJPS would be useful and better. Localization is important in stories, quotes and transition placement needs to be corrected and more clear. Also that some stories sounded like they've been previously published material.

News: 20/25, very well but need to focus more on WJPS events & community events.

Feature: 15/25, needs more improvement ; there's not enough variety and originality.

Sports: 20/25, focus on WJPS events & what they're doing to help people get active in WJPS.

Opinion: 40/50, there needs to be more structure and more cleaning up at the end of writing these pieces. Reviewer said we need to learn how to approach influence over the students at WJPS to do whatever we convey.

Business Operations: She said that we're pretty flexible, good circulation and frequency but we should start to put Advertisements on the newspaper.

Part 3: Graphic Presentation:

35/50. We really need to work on this section a lot, because some of the pictures aren't matching the stories. There needs to be more clarity and work done onto the pictures themselves, maybe consider using Photoshop. Recommends looking at professional newspapers and get some ideas for design. There needs to be people actually in the picture because it humanizes the situation.

And that's about it :)

Livi.