Sep
21
News Critique #4
September 21, 2011 | | 2 Comments
For this week’s critique, I decided to take a look at my high school’s online newspaper called the Como Crier. I used to write for it when I was a senior, not being very knowledgeable about journalism, just as I noticed when reading the articles posted by the journalism class. They don’t seem to know a whole lot about the mechanics and details to writing a good news story.
I read an article called “Minnesotan Running for President”. This headline seemed so boring I wanted to read on to see what it was about. This is not the case when I pick up a newspaper on any given day. After reading the article, I realized that there were just a bunch of facts thrown out there. The inverted pyramid was no where to be found. The lead was non existent and definitely did not pull me in as a reader. If I were not critiquing news articles for this class, I would have definitely skipped over the article entirely. Another major flaw was punctuation. Remembering back to journalism class, our peers edited the news stories, then the teacher, and then it was up to the student to make those changes before posting it to the website. The editing process was very relaxed to say the least.
After reading this article, I went on to read a few others and found that some of the students had great leads and headlines and some even followed the inverted pyramid formula!
Comments
2 Comments so far
I’m glad you are looking at the news with a critical eye, Sarah. It’s a good way to learn; when you find good stories they will help you with leads, and with organization. A link to The Crier?
The link to The Como Crier is