The Columbia Chronicle
The Columbia Chronicle is Columbia's own campus newspaper, written, edited, and produced for Columbia students, by Columbia students. Overall it reads like you would expect a newspaper to read. It certainly has a biased group of topics, seeing as it is a college paper, the journalists tend to write more about issues that effect the lives of an average Columbia student. However, a few of the articles did extend outside the world of Columbia. I'm not convinced that the individual articles could hold their own by themselves, but as an overall publication, I have no doubt that the Chronicle is far superior to your average college-produced newspaper. It has a nice mix of professionalism blended with a laid-back, relaxed feel to it. I think the advertisements say a lot about a paper. In the Chronicle about half of the ads are from the college itself, from the bookstore, to promoting Manifest, to the Student Financial Services' direct deposits. But the rest of the ads seemed like whoever would give them money, thats who would end up in the paper. Which is fine, but its an easy way to tell the caliber of the publication just by looking at the ads. The higher profile the ads, the higher profile the publication.
I would have like to have seen some criticism of the college. For instance, the cover story was about the steady decline in the number of functional film cameras in the film cage. The reason for the declining numbers is because they are too damn old, and they dont make parts for them anymore. I understand their intention behind forcing students to use film, and I can't say I disagree with it, but the point is, I pay a lot for school, therefore I don't want to fight over equipment. That's the kind of argument I wanted to see in this paper. Another article described that Columbia would yet again be raising its tuition prices next semester. Instead of casting this news in the negative light it deserves, the article says: "well, at least its not as bad as some other colleges." I prefer hard-hitting, no holds-barred journalism, not this tiptoeing on the eggshells nonsense. That is not to say the articles were not well-written. They just didn't say what needed to be said.
I did, however, like the obituaries. No, I'm not some guy who enjoys reading about the misfortune of others. I liked the obituaries because of how long they were. In most papers, the obituaries are a short blurb about the person and where they will be buried. Usually a sentence or two. However in the Chronicle, one person takes up a half page. In this issue there were two people being honored on one page, and the additional room allowed the writer to go into some detail about their lives, who they were, and what they accomplished. I would hope that when I pass, I am fortunate enough to get half a page all to myself, and not be lost in the tiny paragraphs of the newspaper obituaries.
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7 comments:
Your description of the Chronicle comes out well and your voice is well done.
However, I hated reading it. Not because it was poorly written, because that is not the case. The case is, it is a giant wall of text. Add a paragraph or something! Make it more appealing to the reader!
-Chelsea B.
You picked a great topic to discuss, as it pertains to the Columbia community- interests should be sparked just by what you picked to critique. Upfront was your biggest strength! You got right to the point of what you wanted to say and said it with intensity and passion. It was also nice to see that you looked at The Chornicles from severals components of the paper, and not just placing your opinion on the publication based off of one article.
Some things to maybe work on are staying in the same tense and check punctuation erros; there are more tense changes than there are punctuation errors. The structure of your critique could use some tweaking as well. Maybe have more transitions from one idea to the next. Also, if you have more than one paragraph, your readers will find it easier to read, understand your opinion, and agree/disagree with what you have to say. Try to not use “I think” “I believe” too often. Using it a couple times works, but once you say it the first time, a reader can tell that this blog is about your opinion regardless if you say “I think” in front of every other sentence. Plus, it may also make you sound more secure with your opinion. :)
Christian did a fabulous job getting straight to the point on the pros and cons of the Columbia Chronicle.He brought up specific issues he had with the paper such as some of the articles, as well as applauded the paper for the promoting it does of columbia events, the bookstore, etc. He brought up that the Columbia Chronicle has obituaries in it.. I never knew this, but it was pretty cool to actually learn something about the piece he was reviewing too. There was nothing this review needed or lacked. I thought this was the perfect length for a review and a thorough enough one at that.
The Columbia Chronicle is a great topic to review. Your insightful thoughts about the chronicle were something I never really thought about until I read your post. The fact that the paper said something like "at least it's not as much as other colleges" is horrible. I liked your response to that "I prefer hard-hitting, no holds-barred journalism, not this tiptoeing on the eggshells nonsense. Very well put. I would like to see that myself.
On the negative side, I would suggest watching your transitions. You could do a lot better work with your transistions and make your review more consistant.
Hi Christian, your other commenters have left you plenty of (well-deserved) praise, so I'll focus on ways you can upgrade. With something as complex at multifaceted as a newspaper, I think you need some kind of angle or theme here to focus your energies and the readers' interest. You're all over the place here; though your individual points are good, they seem arbitrarily chosen. Why don't you talk about layout, about photography, about the mvoie reviews?
One other thing: You seem to be judging the Chronicle against some abstract, universal standard of newspaper goodness, but does that exist? Do we judge the Trib and the Chronicle by the same measure? Or should you lay out, briefly, what distinguishes a good -college- paper from a weak one?
i Liked your first aproch to the review of the newspaper. you seemed to touch on a few of the articles that were in the paper which i thought was good, it actually shows some of the substance thats in the paper. Although i thought that you could have reviewed the paper as a whole, or at least a review of the issue as a whole. it might have let us in on what else the paper consists of rather that just a few articles and advertisments.
I liked this description, "Professionalism blended with a laid-back, relaxed feel to it." By reading that I can tell it is something that I would find interest in reading.
There isn't anything really that I could say to help you, you were thorough and opinionated. I did like how you seperated the Chronicle itself and your opinion of the newspaper.
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