Wednesday Advice

via This isn’t Happiness

Cover Boy

Look whose sculpture made it to the cover of today’s State Press:

 

The Final(s) Countdown

Advanced Editing Final Package

Ah, and the end is so near.

This marks my final post for this class and my final final of my college career. But before I wax poetic on my college experience or the lessons from this course, I’ll share my final project.

Jamie Oliver v. Huntington, West Virginia

I should have brought food.

We’re doing Expert Presentations in class today, which are supposed to inform classmates about various topics and editing-related issues.

Maybe it’s because I’m always hungry during our 11:50-1:40p.m. class hour (evil, I know), or perhaps it’s because I’m interning for the Phoenix New Times‘ food blog Chow Bella, but I can’t resist the possible editing/food combo.

The resources for editing food-related stories, especially those that deal with food legislation are on my Editing Resources page.

In the meantime, you’re of course more than welcome to check out the Food Presentation I gave … without food.

Q&A: Amy Silverman, Managing Editor of Phoenix New Times

Amy Silverman‘s not a fan of tape recorders. We laugh as I’m interviewing her now because she and I both know that I’ll have to re-listen, transcribe, and type all of this up after we sit in her office to talk.

Silverman’s done enough interviews during her journalism career in town that she does just fine with a pen and paper. She’s been working at the Phoenix New Times — first as a staff writer, now as the managing editor — for almost 20 years. (Full disclosure: She’s also my current editor during my internship with New Times.)

We sat down to talk editing and the changing state of journalism.

Amy Silverman with her husband and two daughters. Photo courtesy of Amy Silverman.

How would you describe your job on a daily basis?

I wipe noses and butts … I mean, In terms of editing, I do everything from fixing typos on blog posts to reworking 6000-word feature stories to doing my own investigative projects. I did a three-part project last year that was a result of three years of work. I write headlines, I come up with story ideas …

Was editing always in your plans?

No, I never wanted to be an editor. I was actually a staff writer here for 11 years and I started doing a little teaching on the side. I teach a class called Mothers Who Write and several years ago, Deborah (Silverman’s co-teacher) and I did a little project on KJZZ about Mothers Who Write in honor of Mothers Day. At the time I was pregnant with my second child, and Michael Lacey (Publisher of Phoenix New Times) happened to hear the project on the radio.

Front Page Design

This week, it’s all about front page design. After obsessing over countless examples of great front pages and centerpieces, we were asked to create our own…

Inspiration: The Seattle Times

I chose the Seattle Times because of its large, eye-catching centerpieces. Seattle Times utilizes a variety of photos, graphics and text to communicate the news in an interesting way. The design is simple, yet elegant — a great starting point for inspiration in my own front-page design.

Front Pages of The Seattle Times (March 29 - April 3).

Oh, Centerpieces

In an effort to burn establish the elements of good design into our minds, we took a long and serious look into centerpieces from newspapers around the country.

Here are just a few that caught my eye…

1. The Frederick News-Post
The Frederick News-Post published a great centerpiece in Sunday’s paper about recent weather shenanigans. The photo says everything.

The headline is bold and utilizes a color from the photo, which unifies the centerpiece and directs eye movement throughout the page (and the pull quote on the left side).

The contrast of serif typeface in the masthead and sans-serif in the centerpiece work well together, which is a nice change from countless examples where the contrast is both jarring and distracting.

I think the kerning of the type in the subhead is a little tight. It almost looks like it could be spread out a little into the white space on the left. Ultimately, though, I think this is a great example of art and content that works in unison and serves the message of article.