So, it only took five weeks for the two papers to come out with the same front page story. The Friars/governing-body/license talk may have made the story impenetrable for many beyond the first two paragraphs. Aldate reckons that Cherwell’s timeline and standfirsts represent a better effort to open the article up to the casual reader. But then maybe I’m biased… {nomultithumb}
Nonetheless, both here and generally speaking, there’s a lot more that both papers should be doing to make stories more enjoyable: infoboxes, definitions, graphs, diagrams, infographics, whatever. The fact is that the traditional combination of picture, copy, headline, standfirst and pullquote is immensely unimaginative and unhelpful in telling the news.
Another good piece by Mr Holehouse on Stu p3 – goes to show that reading dry reports can go a long way.
Gratuitous use of a pretty girl in Cherwell’s rent protest coverage. Anything to do with one editor’s aspirations to the Telegraph, whose A-Level result day front page is invariably illustrated by some nubile lass?
The new integrated structure came into its own at Cherwell with this story: pictures were up within 15 minutes of the event, a full story mid-afternoon and video that evening. Where’s the long-promised Stu website? Will they have any multimedia plans?
Aldate reckons that the Top Chumps will have pissed off a lot of people – and not just those in the spread (who mostly love the attention anyway). The casual reader probably saw it as a reflection of the introverted hackdom of Oxford journalism, while the professional hack will have been upset by their omission / the presence of nobodies.
That said, it is a very good-looking spread. Are the Stu still planning to do their bumper hack pullout? If they do, Aldate suggests that they get one of their five subs to actually stop mistakes before they go to print (you know, things like calling Summer Eights "Torpids", Exeter "Exter", repeating OxFood, etc.)
Excellent Lolbrarian this week. Epic fail indeed. Too much cock’n’nipple in Party People for this saint’s liking, though.
Aldate actually has a social life to attend to, so as ever the rest of the review is up to you.
