{"id":53,"date":"2010-05-13T14:44:54","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T18:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/?p=53"},"modified":"2011-02-16T19:18:54","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T23:18:54","slug":"tips-from-nespa%e2%80%99s-board-of-judges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/2010\/05\/13\/tips-from-nespa%e2%80%99s-board-of-judges\/","title":{"rendered":"Tips from NESPA\u2019s Board of Judges"},"content":{"rendered":"

How staffs can improve writing, content and presentation<\/em><\/p>\n

Judges of this year\u2019s Special Achievement entries offered advice about ways staffs can improve writing, content and presentation.<\/p>\n

The judges\u2014all experienced journalism teachers and publication advisers\u2014looked at work that staffs from all over New England and a variety of media had submitted as their best of the year.<\/p>\n

Award winners, judges said, stood out for their canniness, creativity, conciseness, clarity and audience appeal.<\/p>\n

While looking at some of the entries, however, judges working together on an April afternoon found that they kept repeating the same expression: \u201cWhat a shame . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a shame they have run-on sentences.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a shame the images are so small, and it\u2019s so hard to tell what the sequence is supposed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a shame this type is so hard to read.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the interest of improving connections between staffs and their school audiences, and because it is the New England Scholastic Press Association\u2019s 62nd<\/sup> year, here are 62 suggestions judges offered to help staffs continue to move forward.<\/p>\n

Writing of fiction, nonfiction and journalism<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Use a minimum of punctuation, and use it accurately.<\/p>\n

2. Control pronouns and their referents. If the noun is singular, make the pronoun singular. For example, a team is an \u201cit,\u201d not a \u201cthey.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Unless the writing is autobiographical, use third person, avoiding \u201cyou,\u201d \u201cI\u201d or \u201cwe.\u201d<\/p>\n

4. Use the active voice, not the passive voice unless you have a good reason for the passive.<\/p>\n

5. Be accurate with tenses.<\/p>\n

6. Have a reason for changing tenses, preferring consistency rather than slipping and sliding back and forth.<\/p>\n

7. For direct quotations longer than one paragraph begin every paragraph with quotation marks, but do not close the quote until the speaker has finished.<\/p>\n

8. Use indentation for emphasis and clarity.<\/p>\n

9. Consider the sound.<\/p>\n

10. Never let anything you write be published until you have checked to see that all the grammatical and spelling errors are gone.<\/p>\n

11. Know your audience.<\/p>\n

Broadcasting<\/strong><\/p>\n

12. Avoid the overuse of talking heads.<\/p>\n

13. Cite sources for any information that is not generally known.<\/p>\n

14. Focus on the action itself, keeping what is newsworthy and of greatest interest in the foreground.<\/p>\n

15. Do not include bloopers with your entry. Edit them out.<\/p>\n

16. In general, let the interview source catch his breath before you expect him to talk.<\/p>\n

Online<\/strong><\/p>\n

17. Be sure your entries are easily accessible.<\/p>\n

18. Make navigation through the site as simple as possible.<\/p>\n

19. Keep in mind that there is no substitute for clarity.<\/p>\n

20. Provide levels of emphasis.<\/p>\n

21. Use captions and credits on the photos.<\/p>\n

22. Make it clear exactly when an item went online.<\/p>\n

Pictures<\/strong><\/p>\n

23. Run pictures big. As Prof. Robert Baram, our organization\u2019s founder, used to say, \u201cIf you can cover a head with a dime, it\u2019s not worth a cent.\u201d<\/p>\n

24. Avoid smiley snapshots.<\/p>\n

25. Avoid multiple staged photos.<\/p>\n

26. Crop to eliminate dead space.<\/p>\n

27. Have a dominant photo and levels of emphasis by size.<\/p>\n

28. Credit every single picture.<\/p>\n

29. Give every picture its own caption. Don\u2019t \u201cgang them up.\u201d<\/p>\n

30. Write captions that identify left to right, front row, second row, back row\u2014not first row, second row, third row.<\/p>\n

Typography<\/strong><\/p>\n

Keep simplicity as a goal here. According to one old saying: \u201cType should be invisible.\u201d The audience should see the message, not the type itself.<\/p>\n

31. Avoid large areas of gray and type in odd, hard-to-decipher shapes.<\/p>\n

32. Use white space as relief.<\/p>\n

33. Do not use reverse plate in body type\u2014especially not reverse plate in small, sans serif body type.<\/p>\n

34. Keep lines of body type to one and a half times the length of the lower case alphabet, and use grafs (one- or two-sentence units), not paragraphs so as to pick up the pace.<\/p>\n

35. Be sure that headlines show levels of emphasis by varying\u00a0 their sizes and degrees of boldness.<\/p>\n

36. Stay with one single-line head on facing pages, varying into multi-line primary headlines and also incorporating subheads in a contrasting type face.<\/p>\n

37. Keep to one main typographical style throughout, avoiding the tendency to experiment just for the sake of experimentation.<\/p>\n

38. Do not begin a story below a picture, then wrap it up alongside the picture. Instead, make it clear how the reader is to get through the type in a simple sequence.<\/p>\n

39. Keep to a good general rule: \u201cType below art.\u201d<\/p>\n

News Coverage<\/strong><\/p>\n

40. Provide attribution for any statement a reader might question.<\/p>\n

41. In the same vein, cite sources for statistics. Let people know how recent the numbers are, along with the size and nature of the sampling.<\/p>\n

42. Quote people with a variety of viewpoints. In sports, for instance, go beyond the school\u2019s own teams and coaches to get quotes from opponents.<\/p>\n

43. So as to avoid staleness cover not just what has happened, but also what is happening and what might happen next.<\/p>\n

44. Don\u2019t summarize what we don\u2019t all know.<\/p>\n

Writing in news publications and broadcasts<\/strong><\/p>\n

45. Emphasize what is about to happen, not stale information.<\/p>\n

46. Emphasize the school angle, showing how events affect your own audience.<\/p>\n

47. Use quotes that are telling, not trite.<\/p>\n

48. Put in a telling quote close to the top of the story.<\/p>\n

49. Use headlines that combine subjects and verbs.<\/p>\n

50, Avoid label headlines, like a succession of names of sports teams: Baseball, Golf, Boys\u2019 lacrosse, Girls\u2019 lacrosse\u00a0 . . . Instead, say what the teams are actually doing or are about to do.<\/p>\n

51. Avoid clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

News and feature leads <\/strong><\/p>\n

These openings need to get right to the point, telling and selling the stories in the first 20 words.<\/p>\n

52. Find the real feature of the story and emphasize it by leading with it<\/p>\n

53. Do not lead with the \u201cwhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

54. Do not lead with the \u201cwhen.\u201d<\/p>\n

55. Do not lead with a direct quote.<\/p>\n

56. Do not lead with a question.<\/p>\n

Columns, editorials and reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n

57. Connect the subject matter to your school audience and students\u2019 day-to-day lives.<\/p>\n

58. Stay focused. Sometimes subheads every few grafs can be helpful.<\/p>\n

59. Keep in mind that a column is bylined, but an editorial is unsigned.<\/p>\n

60. Use \u201cwe\u201d in an editorial to mean the staff of the publication or broadcast.<\/p>\n

61. Avoid general descriptive terms\u2014\u201camazing,\u2019 \u201cwonderful,\u201d \u201cbeautiful\u201d\u2014in reviews.<\/p>\n

62. Do not preach. Again quoting Prof. Baram, remember when writing an opinion piece that you were \u201cappointed, not anointed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Helen F. Smith<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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