Sunday, November 11, 2007

Zephyrus Critique

The Zephyrus, Edina High School's news paper is a disgrace to the world of journalism. I never feel fulfilled when I read it news wise. I feel like I'm reading people's profile on facebook or myspace, or some other opinionated networking site. This brings up the first and biggest issue the paper faces. Are the writers doing journalism? I would argue no. Or using quotes, which does make them opinion pieces, but, moving on. I feel like they aren't asking them selves WHO CARES! Obviously somebody will want to read a story about our new principal or the I-35W bridge. But it's old news people! Again, obviously I know the paper is issued only like once a month. But, then principally the writers should write the story's like they can be read. A quote from the front page of the most current issue of Zephyrus, "[While looking at the twisted heap of metal that was the I35W bridge, two questions came to mind. "Why did this happen?" and "Where do we go from here?"]" So let me take this on. First, it is not timely because we know what happened and where we are going from here. I'm not suggesting the writer should not answer these questions in the article, just don't use that dang introduction to pull a reader in! I KNOW THAT STUFF! So why would I continue reading? The story has conflict and relative proximity. Those are two elements can be greatly played up to make this story much more interesting! It's written with these things very well. It's major flaw is it's introduction which themes the rest of the writing, making it boring to me as a reader. I would say that most of the school paper is written this way. These are some prevailing themes throughout each paper edition. If that could be changed it would make for a much more enjoyable read in my opinion. My other big complaint about the paper is that I really don't see real journalism taking place. This may be because of the kids that are on staff. I can say this because I know who most of them are. I have a hypothesis for why this may be happening. It happens because there wasn't enough competition to get on staff and so a lot of the kids on staff are friends. Since they are friends there isn't enough competition between them so they aren't motivated to compete for the best story or write more creatively to get their story in the paper. This is easily fixed by simply adding more writers so there is competition.