Editors’ Blog

The Daily Californian launched its redesigned Web site Sunday evening. It was another step in our efforts to increase our online capabilities. The redesign has been in the works since July, when we had our first online summit to brainstorm new features. In addition to having a much cleaner look and feel, we wanted the site to address several key issues:

1. Improve user navigation and interactivity of our content
2. Organize the many projects we’ve introduced such as blogging, photo reprints, multimedia, Marketplace
3. Increase our online revenue-generating capabilities
4. Better feature our articles and special issues

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Popularity: 15%

There’s this great line from a song that everyone sings at baseball games in America.

“Root, root, root for the home team. If they don’t win it’s a shame.”

Lots of people around campus think that it’s a shame whenever the Daily Cal bags on a team or the performance of an athlete here at Cal. Hypothetically, these people would say, “But you’re the school newspaper. You’re supposed to support our student-athletes.”

While we may root for the Bears in our hearts, we cannot explicitly root for Cal when we’re on the job. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 21%

With an extra 1.5 inches of height starting this semester, our new paper size calls for a redesign of the “A Look Inside” element of our front page.

Some features we have implemented so far:

1. A consistent color scheme. Black for text, and red and blue for teasers.
2. Overlapping of images and rules to provide more visual interest; for example, photo cutouts to break away from the traditional boxy look.
3. Better photo crops to grab readers’ attention.
4. Texture. The design team is currently building a library with textures, such as paper and fabric, to use as background images.

Hopefully our new “A Look Inside” will make you stop and pick up our paper when you’re hurrying to class. Please send me your comments and suggestions at design@dailyal.org. After all, our readers are the reason why the design team is working so hard.

Popularity: 22%

At 1 a.m. my phone is still ringing—things to double-check, photos to re-edit. I’ve learned that this job is not one you leave when you walk out of the office. Always keep your phone on and always be prepared to answer calls. 

Walking home from the gym, sitting in class, while I sleep. I should always be expecting a call. And not just from my photographers or other editors. All day I think about photographing and editing, and then I go to work for a five-hour shift at night. Up the next day for class at 9 a.m. and ready to go again.

On days when big protests happen or important people come to the Bay Area, I have to listen extra hard for my phone–call after call. E-mails pile in, text messages too. I need to coordinate “X” number of photographers to go to “Y” place by “Z” time, while I sit and listen to my professor talk about Incan and Aztec architecture.

And though this may sound hellish, it is a great job. The adrenaline rush when I go on a new assignment is such a high (not that I get to go on assignments very often anymore). It may be a 40+ hour-a-week job, but to be an editor you have to love what you do, and however much I may gripe about being tired and overworked, I wouldn’t trade my job for anything.

So the calls at 1 a.m., or later, are worth it if I know I’ll see a good paper on the stands in just a few short hours. This job may never sleep, but it is important that, once in a while, we do.

Popularity: 24%

The piles of applications have been sorted and saved, having been considered by the various editors at the Daily Cal. We could only accept so many candidates, and it certainly isn’t fun to let fellow students know that they will not be working for the Daily Cal this semester. But the development editor’s position should not be to turn people away from working for the Daily Cal or away from the field of journalism.Instead, the development editor should help students produce the best application possible.Having looked through nearly half of the 200 applications received this semester and many of the 300 applications last semester, I would like to share a few impressions on what makes a strong, memorable application.

1. Write unique cover letters. If you have done something fun or unusual, if you have experienced something different from other people, include it! It does not matter if these experiences are directly related to journalism. Doing something out of the ordinary makes you a better journalist simply because you can relate to more people and have more to draw upon in your writing. Read the rest of this entry »

   Popularity: 26%

   Tags: Cover letters, job application
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Our dear Clog is going through a lot of growing pains this semester. Not only did we start the year off with a new editor, but we’ve also had to work with a tiny staff while adjusting to a whole new blog design.

If you take a glimpse at the Daily Clog right now, you’ll see a clean, attractive interface–the kind you’d want to show to your mom. Beautiful, yes, but the transition did come with various technical difficulties. Since the semester began in mid-January, the Clog and its resident tech have been working hard to fix a wide spectrum of flaws in the new design, whether they be lost comments or broken links. We still have a lot of work to do, so bear with us.

Speaking of lost comments: Where have all the commenters gone? The last time we checked, blogging was supposed to be a highly interactive medium.

Don’t get us wrong. We do get comments, and we very much appreciate them. The occasional gripe about our writing abilities is nice, but we love what you think about the actual post topic even more. According to Lifehacker’s guide to weblog comments,

“Leaving a comment on someone’s weblog is like walking into their living room and joining in on a conversation … (g)ood blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged.”

Why not jump into the Clog’s lively conversations?

Geek to Live: Lifehacker’s Guide to Weblog Comments [Lifehacker]

Popularity: 30%

As you may have noticed, The Daily Californian Web site is undergoing a major overhaul. We realize there is still a lot of work to be done, and we ask you please be patient! Although we have many new features in the works, the most immediate concerns we are addressing are implementing our more advanced site search and improving our article organization system.

The purpose of the redesign is to ensure our organization’s online presence is competitive with other newspapers. The first sentence of the Daily Cal mission statement reads: “The Daily Californian exists and functions to provide an opportunity for the students of the University of California to receive training in journalism and all aspects of newspaper production.”

Most professional newspaper organizations are increasingly integrating podcasts, photo galleries and video to complement their coverage. The Washington Post’s summer internship application this year included a separate section asking applicants to “describe your multimedia experience or interest.”

A major focus of the Daily Cal over the past year has been on multimedia development. This semester, we are making an even greater effort to produce more audio slideshows and podcasts. When the bulk of our changes are implemented we will be able to more effectively display these features.

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Popularity: 29%

Being a student journalist at the Daily Cal involves performing a master balancing act. As an individual, you must balance your responsibilities at the paper with your classes. As an editor, you have to balance you time and attention among multiple writers and stories on a daily basis. And most fundamentally, you must guarantee a balance between the views and facts within each and every story.

It was the latter challenge that came into sharp focus with a recent story on the resignation of Interfraternity Council president Nikhil Bhagat, which was prompted by a hazing incident involving members of his fraternity, Delta Tau Delta. The story, written by the student communities reporter Vincent Quan, was a delicate one to report and an even more sensitive one to edit.

Running the story in itself was a decision made based on our duty to our readers. It is our belief at the Daily Cal that we must report what we know when we know it—as fairly and accurately as possible. We are not out to be sensational but instead it is our purpose to report news that students and community members have a right to know.

This story represented an opportunity to reveal the details of how campus administrators dealt with a serious situation and also to present readers with the truth behind the resignation of a student leader.

Once the decision to pursue the story was made and the reporting was done, it became evident that there were multiple layers to the story. The editing process drew out a few debates over how to organize the different aspects to most accurately convey the situation.

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Popularity: 27%

Let me get a little Brechtian on you for one second: A good arts section is, in my humble opinion, about more than just telling you what to spend your lunch money on this week. Sure, it’s handy to know whether or not a new movie like “The Kingdom” is any good, but what’s really worthwhile is to take pieces of culture we’re handed and then pull them apart—to examine what values and ethics they’re really presenting us with, reconciling it within a wider context and cultural climate and then finally deeming its worth.I use “The Kingdom” as an example because Daily Cal writer Ryland Walker Knight recently used most of his 12 inches of newsprint to focus on the troubling racial politics that had been slipped in under the big Hollywood sheen in that particular film. If you’re looking for a simple, thumbs up or down kind of rating, this may frustrate you, but a good review section will put a bit of dignity back into that colorless term “consumer.” Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 25%

Everybody and their mother may have blogs now, but it’s still hard to integrate the blog vibe with a professional newspaper. Many major newspapers–such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle–boast multiple blogs. Besides this blog, we have the Clog, and it’s not even a year old. We’ve struggled to fit in this step-child of journalism and often irreverent whining, to make it a part of the paper, to box it into some sort of ethical code.

Hence The Daily Clog’s correction policy, which stipulates all incorrect facts must be corrected in a timely manner. Corrections usually involve strikethroughs, notes at the end of a post or a parenthetical citation. It is also policy to leave evidence of the previously incorrect statement to preserve transparency and honesty. Our most recent correction, however, did not leave in the original text–this was partly due to miscommunication between blogger and editor. Normally, the error would still be visible in the post.

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Popularity: 37%