Pathfinder Feedback: Issue No. 6

We've entered August and the Pathfinder is still bearing fruit ...

THE GOOD

Opinion pieces were all solid, as usual. Especially liked Kasi's column on her genetic foibles.

A&E content was top-shelf, led by Kaylee's review of "Get Low." Jeremiah's review of Neil Young's latest moved me to go to the NPR site and listen to the album (I, too, found the sonic sound scape intriguing but the songs themselves extremely disappointing.). Alex found fault with both the decor and bland food at Grumpy's.

On the news side, Alex introduced readers to Active Minds, the newest club on the campus.

Another exhaustive sports section, including this week's nod to sweet scribing, from Jed's Sports Shorts:

Dare I say it, I think that a sub-.500 team will make it to the playoffs from the NFC West. I just don't even want to think about that. I'd rather chew on a wad of aluminum foil than think about Seattle making the playoffs with fewer wins than losses.

Speaking of money features, "Word on the Street" was solid gold. Excellent question, thorough responses.

Starting to see more ads trickling into the paper, which is not only encouraging but necessary. Good work and keep them coming, Nathan.

THE NOT-SO-GOOD

Jed squeezed another cover out of a campus scenic shot, but pretty soon you'll be running out of that option. As I mentioned before, a magazine-style cover requires quite a bit of creativity and preplanning. You'll need to put your thinking caps on a little earlier in the process (like, say, Wednesdays at the staff meeting) to come up with ideas for illustrations. In hindsight, a shot of the co-presidents of Active Minds, Doug Cruthirds and Sabrina Wakefield, would have been ideal for this issue (Hopefully they would have agreed to have their picture taken).

In an ideal world, the letter to the editor should have run on the opinion page. You're jumping Kasi's column; might as well sneak the short letter underneath that or possibly squeeze it in alongside "Doodling in Class".

Feature on Active Minds cried out for a little more exploration, namely how many members does the club have and what does it do exactly, other than hold informational chili feeds? What are their goals, besides the nebulous idea of "awareness"?

Instead of filling the gap below the volleyball story with an unrelated quote, how about running the Frontier Conference standings as a breakout box?

For the sake of full disclosure, the story on Obama's interview with college journalists needed an explanation that no one from the Pathfinder staff was directly involved in the interview, that it was written from a transcript released by the source.

Piece on the Clery Report brings up the question of how available campus security reports are at LCSC. They should be a matter of public record and thus fully accessible to Pathfinder editors/reporters, if they want to report on them. Your adviser thinks a weekly report — we call them "blotters" in journalism — would be of great interest to the Pathfinder's audience. Consider and explore, please.

It's smart to direct readers to timely results online, but there's no need for the "Thank You" at the end of the editor's note that led off the golf story.

THINGS TO WORK ON
                      

WRONG	RIGHT
text-book	textbook (one word, no hyphen)
student-journalist	student journalist (no hyphen)
Everything in Between (album name)	"Everything in Between" (composition title)
forty years	40 years
I have a weakness; candy corn.	I have a weakness: candy corn.
Frank is a business man.	Frank is a businessman.
1:00	1 p.m.
SUB room 143	SUB Room 143
email	e-mail
week four	Week 4
ten teams in the NFC West	10 teams in the NFC West
west coast	West Coast (geographical area)