f
T H E S E
our
ancy
S T R U C K
Keeping sports coverage
FRESH
By Stan Zoller
P
BLACK
P01.V52.I4
arch 29, 2013: This page has a lot of wow factor by virtue of its dominant art, headline fonts
and use of running the type down the side. The photo collage, handled by a team of staff members
at the HUB, including art director Henry Anker, photo editor Lani Chang and editor in chief Daniel
Tutt, is effective because the bottom image takes your eye right into the story. The story is tightly
written for an unusual subject. A deck to tweak the reader as to the subject may have helped as
would setting the story ragged right to take advantage of the openness of the bottom of the photo
may have added a bit of spice to the layout, but the overall layout and design remains strong.
Did you notice? The excellent use of spot color in the headline calls attention to the story by
blending in well with the photo.
Says the adviser: According to adviser Kelly Wilkerson, the layout was “kind of a last-minute
thing” because the staff was working together and looking at a variety of possibilities of each
element including the headline and photo treatment.
Adviser: Kelly Wilkerson
CYAN
M
MAGENTA
THE HUB, DAVIS SENIOR HS (DAVIS, CALIF.)
YELLOW
roviding coverage in a newspaper that comes out once or twice a month is
unto itself a challenge. The challenge is heightened when it comes to covering
a school’s athletic programs.
While many schools use their newspaper’s website for game stories, they
now face the challenge of making their sports sections interesting and timely.
Sports features about in-season athletes, issues such as concussions or other
athletic news are becoming more common
Engaging sports coverage requires newspaper staffs to work cooperatively
more than ever before. Where a dominant game photo used to be a hook, it
now screams “dated story.” A high school sports editor must take the lead in
identifying not only engaging stories, but ways to make the sports pages and
coverage appealing to a wide audience.
Some schools see fit to cover, sometimes to an excess, local professional
teams even though nearby dailies do so on a regular basis. The challenge for
scholastic sports editors and writers is to be crisp and creative.
How is this being accomplished?
Many schools include not only sports briefs, but often take the time to feature
sports in a series of extended wrap-ups, often including dominant artwork.
Sports sections are also taking a closer look at students who participate in
non-school sponsored sports. These not only offer diversity to a sports section,
but highlight students who might otherwise go uncovered.
With the advent of school publications online, and more school newspapers
publishing only once a month, student journalists are challenged to keep their
publications fresh and invigorating. In sports, many school publications have
not only met the challenge, they’ve exceeded it.