Proposal

  • Chosen News Organization: The Daily Illini
  • Proposed Idea: Semesterly humor/satirical edition of the paper
    • With all of the negative stories that appear in the news these days, I think our student population could use a pick-me-up. We would like to entertain the idea of creating a once-a-semester comedic paper. This would not only include humor from our own writers, but also from local businesses. Some of the ideas for this paper could include:
      • Sports superlatives: Coming up with funny “awards” for UIUC athletes and coaches and writing a blurb for each one.
      • Local business meme competition: We don’t have too many ads that aren’t in house at the moment so local businesses could submit memes about themselves and the winners could get published. They may have to pay to enter.
      • Make fun of ourselves: Sometimes we take ourselves too seriously. We could find some complaints that people have made online and use them to create some self-deprecating humor like a true gen-Zer. We could use some content from the UIUC Reddit page.
      • Crazy Massmail update: This could be memes about recent Massmails from the Chancellor.
      • Crazy Police Blotters: This could be a fun way to sort of make fun of all of the things that have been going on on campus (an insane amount of vehicle thefts, big parties, etc.).
  • How we’ll go about this: We would start out with a comedic section in the paper. From there, we could put out ads to attract advertisers and get students excited about a funny edition of the Daily Illini. Then, perhaps before the end of this semester or next semester, we could finally release an entire paper featuring the funny ads as well as all the funny stories. It could be a shorter paper (maybe a 4×4 instead of a 6×6).

11/6 Critique

  • For starters, I really like the cover of the salary guide, and the rest of it was pretty interesting as well. I don’t know if we usually use covers like that for this edition, but it seems right on par with what we’ve been talking about the last few weeks
  • Thursday’s paper had a good cover page from my perspective. The stories seemed interesting, or at least comparatively to the articles within the paper. I also think the pictures have improved, and they aren’t blown up to take up a huge amount of the page.
  • The main article on the cover of Monday’s paper is good, and the update on our region is a little less exciting but I think it’s necessary. I’m a little bored by the students experiencing burnout, because all I’ve heard since school started is burnout, so I’m not sure if that’s great news right now. I also liked the picture for the main article, but I guess there’s not really action happening in it
  • the layout of 3A for Monday looks a little weird to me with the two pics at the very top and then all text the rest of the page, but I don’t really know anything about layout so I don’t know if that’s a fair critique
  • I like the layout and cutouts on 1B for sports in Monday’s paper. More interesting to look at and read through
  • I think the features article on the age of politics skewing representation might have been nice for the cover in Monday’s paper. The graphs look good and I found the article more interesting than students experiencing burnout, but I guess there was already a graph on the cover
  • Our online felt like it kind of just operated as normal, so we probably could have done more with updates for elections.
  • The video we posted for election day was pretty good and I liked the incorporation of interviews into the video, another instance of the voice of the interviewee playing nicely. Not a huge fan of the football video we posted because the narrator just has a really low energy and it sounds like he’s whispering
  • Probably could have posted a lot more about the election on social media, like some live updates and things like that

10/9 Critique

  1. I would say the only story that could surprise someone is ‘Test return times down to eight hours’. This is an important story for students or staff getting tested on campus because a week ago it would take almost a day to get test results back. The other three stories, however, seem to be selected because of the topic they represent. 
  2. I think the protesting photo is the best visual on A1 because it shows human faces actually doing something. The testing photo isn’t bad, it’s just a little generic. Looking at the voting picture, I would think the story would be about voting in-person rather than mail-in The kingfisher picture is generic, but I’m not sure if anything different would’ve fit, maybe no picture?
  3. The lead story, the protest story, doesn’t really follow the proper lead story structure. The headline is a little bigger than the rest, but not by much and the headline doesn’t stand out, the picture does. It helps the picture is a good one, but the story itself really doesn’t stand out to me. I also don’t think this was the most surprising news story. The centerpiece package of this page is technically the lead story because of how large the picture is. 
  4. Between A2 and A3, I think the study abroad story could be more engaging than the kingfisher or mail-in voting story. It has a bigger immediate impact on students because many at least consider study abroad as an option. 
  5. I think a hidden gem was the Reddit story on A4. This type of story is really fun to read and a lot of students can relate to this type of light-hearted story. I also think it’s a good change of pace from all the negative coronavirus-related stories we have to produce. 
  6. I think the Block I story could’ve used another source like a student planning to attend the watch party. That would’ve provided a better human face to this story. 
  7. In Thursday’s paper, I think the group fitness story could’ve had more photos. It’s interesting to see how clubs like these are operating right now. 
  8. I think the main point of this infographic is clear. It’s a little difficult to read, but I don’t think it’s deceiving or spins the topic. 

Critique for 10/9

  1. The only story that might be unexpected for readers would be the story about test times. This is information that can help form their decisions in their daily lives. I think the protest coverage is interesting (I’m biased) but the story about encouraging mail-in voting seems like the preachy problem we had last week.
  2. I really like the protest picture because it shows an actual action and lots of people in the midst of a protest. It also shows the location and an idea of the route that a march took through campus. For mail-in voting, the picture shows some of the precautions that citizens can avoid by mailing in their votes. The picture for the test time doesn’t offer much useful information. Infographic in Thursday’s paper seems interesting.
  3. It seems like Monday’s had two interesting visuals in the top, but the testing center photos don’t really grab my attention. Doesn’t seem like any of the articles is really the main, most important one, aside from the protest coverage but I’m not sure if that should be. For Thursday the false positive header grabs my attention the most.
  4. Jewish organizations opposing ISG is very interesting to me because there is conflict. Maybe it didn’t make front page because there wasn’t a visual for it? Food insecurity story in Thursday might be more important because it could help people out to see that.
  5. Posting a meme on the front page of the paper would definitely increase the “talk factor”. I’m curious as to the attribution for the picture. Unless Kenyon created it, shouldn’t it be attributed to the reddit account that posted it? I don’t know, just curious. Ballot box is also interesting and the image provides information.
  6. I think most of the stories within the inside pages could have benefitted a lot from human faces, especially the Halloween one. Halloween is all about festivities and people doing fun things, there should be more about people and less about city ordinance.
  7. Maybe photos of people working out inside the arc because it looks much different now with all of the restrictions. Also maybe get a photographer into some of the apartment gyms where people usually aren’t following the guidelines by wearing masks, wiping all the machines down and standing six feet apart.
  8. The graphs that appeared seem simple and easy to read for me. I like them, but I really don’t know much about them. Additionally, yeah the fully blocked out ballot box looks much better.