Bradford+Critique

//The Bradford// has improved drastically since last year in terms of how balanced is it, the paper has since tried to cover more stories and happenings in sectors other than sports. But we have yet to shy away from the “over-achiever” crowd stories, although it is important to commend the students who are able to go above and beyond the average students, it seems as though we never look at the more 'average' students. Taking an average students life and writing about it in a way that interests the student body could be a way of compensating our excessive use of the atypical overachieving students. We are good at avoiding bias, although in some articles objectivity may be difficult to uphold. Our In Focus section is a great way to allow for clear subjective thoughts that have counterpoints, unlike in the editorial section where one point of view is taken. It allows for two different types of op-eds to be addressed, some are better if both points are explicitly stated. There is a clear difference between the intro writers and the staff writers, which would be an impossible distinction to eradicate from the paper, so for the sake of fairness I omitted the intro articles from my analysis. Our leads and articles have become more concise, although our In Focus “the battle of the sexes” had two very long articles that did not hold a reader attentions long enough to be as long as they were. We need to work on having strict word counts to ensure no digression occurs in the writing and it is aesthetically more pleasing to see shorter articles. Having a copy of the Associated Press Stylebook in the Bradford room would be a great resource for the paper when we need more ideas on how leads or topic sentences. I noticed how 'although, the, persons name, they, this” are far too commonly used as the first word in topic sentences, and repeatedly used as the first word in sentences throughout the article, along with other words more specific to the article. Varying our vocabulary will improve the level our writing is at. Another stylistic issue we should improve in is the variety and clarity of sentence structure. An onhand style book would help with this issue as well. The packet alludes to having a news/feature article have a partnering opinion article in each issue, which could if necessary stand alone but give the reader more insight into a specific topic. I know magazines and newspaper do this a lot. More on the note of editorials/opinions, the paper needs an unsigned opinions article every issue, a guest writer, and at least one columnist. Having the monthly columnist(s) be kids who are not in the 'overachieving' crowd or the sports crowd, or even the drama kid cliques, would be a great way to get different perspectives of the high school out there in a new way. Another idea, which can be completely rejected, is having a graduated Bradford staffer write an article or a letter to the editors about how different their college experience is from high school, and what made it easy to adjust. I think we also need some type of tradition from the old Bradfords we have in the morgue to be tied into the paper, or the ubiquitous “5 years ago this month in The Bradford. . .” with an old article.