The Index wants to hear your thoughts on who should win this year’s Academy Awards. The Index might use the results from our readership polls in future TruLife coverage of the Academy Awards.
Academy Award winners will be announced nationally on ABC at 7 p.m. March 5. Below are the nominees for the different categories.
By Blake Toppmeyer
I’m surprised — but pleased — that we at the Index didn’t get any negative feedback from readers after we published anti-Semitic Tweets made by a Truman student on her Twitter account.
If you haven’t read the story, basically, the student’s Tweets generated a lot of feedback from Jewish organizations who were offended by the Twitter posting.
The question we faced at the Index was: Was the student’s anti-Semitic Tweet so inappropriate that we shouldn’t publish it in the story. After consideration, we decided to run the Tweet, and it appears in the story’s second graf. I thought that for readers to understand the seriousness of the incident and why her Tweet caused so much of a reaction, readers needed to see the Tweet. Then, readers could form their own opinion about whether the Tweet was offensive.
If the Index hadn’t published the Tweet and instead just told readers that it contained offensive anti-Semitic content, the Index would be editorializing and not allow readers to decide for themselves.
Overall, our readers seemed to find publishing the Tweet appropriate. The story was No. 1 in reads from our Jan. 21 edition, garnering 2,036 online reads.
By Blake Toppmeyer
During my 3 ½ years at the Index, it has become clear to me that the Our View is probably the most often misunderstood written piece in our newspaper.
Some readers do not understand why the Our View does not have a byline, as most stories and columns do. Readers have questioned whether this means the author is embarrassed to print his/her name with the editorial or whether we try to hide behind a secretive cloak.
In reality, this is not the case. The Our View is not unique to the Index. It is a consistent editorial element of most newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and USA Today. And the Index also is not unique in not printing a byline with the editorial.
We don’t publish a byline because although the Our View is written by one person, it represents the view of the Index Editorial Board, which consists of the Editor in Chief, Managing Editor, Opinions Editor, News Editor and Copy Chief. This semester, the Index has operated under a copy-chief-by-committee format, so the editorial board has only consisted of four people.
The editorial board meets every Monday to discuss topics that could develop into an Our View. We then narrow down the list of options and try to hammer out arguments for one or more topics. The editorial board makes every attempt to write about a topic and stance that the entire editorial board can agree upon. If no such topic/stance can be found, we will take the stance that the majority supports.
In most cases, the Opinions Editor will write the Our View, and the other members of the editorial board will then edit it. Occasionally, the Editor in Chief or Managing Editor will write the Our View.
Although the Our View represents the view of the editorial board — or at least the majority opinion of the editorial board — it does not necessarily represent the opinion of the entire staff. Such an editorial would be nearly impossible, considering the Index employs about 65 students.
Hopefully this clears up some questions on how the Index approaches the Our View each week. Thanks for reading.
By Blake Toppmeyer
Anonymity and if/when to grant it is an issue that comes up fairly regularly in journalism. At the Index, our staff has encountered a request for anonymity in each of the past two weeks.
At the Index, no source is granted anonymity without approval from the Editor in Chief.
Generally speaking, newspaper editors – myself included – are hesitant to grant requests for anonymity. When an editor grants a source anonymity, it can give readers a reason to doubt the validity of a story. If the reader doesn’t know who the source is, the reader cannot decide if the source is qualified to make the statements he/she is making.
Also, when sources have the cloak of anonymity, it often gives them much more confidence in revealing information they might not otherwise give. Although this is sometimes advantageous, it also can be dangerous. As an editor and as a reader, you must ask yourself: If the source isn’t comfortable giving this information without anonymity, how much can this information be trusted as factual?
That’s not to say that newspapers never grant anonymity. The Index will grant sources anonymity in some situations.
Although every request is looked at on a case-by-case basis, the Index does have some general guidelines for granting anonymity:
1) Will printing the source’s name put the source in physical danger? If the answer is yes, the source generally would be granted anonymity. The Index doesn’t want to put a source in danger.
Sometimes, however, sources think that having their name published will put them in greater danger, but as an editor, after close evaluation, you disagree that their safety will be compromised. Then the editor has to decide whether it’s worth it to print the source’s name, despite the source thinking he/she will be in danger. Again, there isn’t always a clear-cut answer to these dilemmas. They are handled case-by-case.
2) Will printing the source’s name put the source in undue financial danger? For instance, will the source lose his/her job if the Index prints his/her name? If the editor determines after evaluation that this might occur, the editor might decide to grant the source anonymity.
Now, this doesn’t include sources who bring this burden on themselves. For example, the Index won’t hesitate to print someone’s name who has been arrested even if that person might lose his/her job. In that case, the individual brought that dilemma on his/herself.
3) Will printing the source’s name bring undue embarrassment to the source? If the editor evaluates that it will, the editor might not print the source’s name.
Similar with point 2, however, if the source has brought the situation on his/herself (i.e. got arrested) the Index won’t hesitate the print the source’s name simply because the source will be embarrassed that everyone can read that he/she got arrested. After all, information such as arrests is public record that the general public and/or future employers could access anyway.
Another interesting issue with anonymity: newspapers frequently allow readers to post anonymous comments to stories online but don’t typically grant anonymity in the letters to the editor section of the print edition. Is this proof that the standard for credibility is less online? I’m not sure, and I’m not sure it’s entirely right that online comment posters can say virtually whatever they want anonymously. But that’s the standard the journalism industry seems willing to accept online.
For an interesting angle on this issue of the anonymity of online comment posters, you should check out this column in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Thanks for reading.
Newspaper design is an element of journalism that we journalists spend great lengths of time stressing over, but it’s an aspect of journalism that rarely gets conscious notice from readers. If a reporter misspells a word or makes a grammar mistake, readers will take quick notice. Or if a reporter gets a fact wrong in a story, several readers will write an e-mail or leave a comment to correct the reporter, which we journalists appreciate.
But if a newspaper has a bad page design — or even a good page design — readers probably won’t realize it. At least consciously. At the subconscious level, a bad page design can make readers ignore a well-written story, flip to a different page or put down the newspaper entirely. Thus, the design of a page is nearly as important as the content of the stories on the page.
In an effort to give the Index a clean, fresh and modern design, our newspaper launched a redesign this year. The old design wasn’t bad. Actually, I liked it pretty well. But it was time for a change. The Index had not had a major redesign in more than a decade.
(Note: To view PDFs of the old and new Index page design, please visit index.truman.edu.)
Although not every facet of the Index’s design has changed, faithful readers surely have noticed some of the major changes.
Here are some of the highlights:
1) The nameplate (where it says the name of the paper) changed fairly drastically. The typeface of “Index” did not change, however, and remains in Felix Titling typeface. I kept this unchanged because the Index name has become a fairly recognizable brand around Truman and Kirksville, and changing the typeface of “Index” could hurt our branding efforts. The new nameplate includes a purple color design to reflect that the Index is the campus paper for Truman State, whose school colors are purple and white.
Possibly the biggest change was moving the nameplate down. This creates more room for teasers. Formerly, we ran teasers at the side of the nameplate. My theory is that teasers need to be big and noticeable or else they don’t serve much point. Thus, to create more room for teasers, the nameplate was dropped down. Teasers at the bottom of the page were removed to ensure that there was the same amount of space for content on the front page as before the redesign.
2) Font changes: We changed our body copy font from Times 9.5 to Cambria 9.5. During the last couple years, I’d heard from some readers and professional journalists that our body copy was difficult to read. Although we stuck with 9.5, Cambria is much easier on the eyes than Times. We also changed our main headline font from Myriad Pro Black Condensed to Myriad Pro Bold, which seems to stand out a bit more and give the main headline more dominance. The secondary headlines remain the same, in Georgia font.
3) The Index is making a stronger effort this year on having a dominant centerpiece story on each section front. We want readers to be drawn in to the centerpiece, and then, in all likelihood, they also will notice the stories surrounding the centerpiece. Previously, the Index at times ran strong centerpieces, but at other times our most dominant story was not placed in the center of the page. Sometimes, it was hard to tell what the dominant story was.
If our centerpiece efforts are successful, readers now should not have any doubt as to what story they should look at first. In design terms, we’ve tried to beef up the dominance and emphasis of our main story. The Index is not alone in the effort to create strong centerpieces. Many papers across the country, including USA Today, the nation’s leader in circulation, design their section fronts around a centerpiece story.
4) The TruLife and Sports sections added a rail to their front pages. My hope was that the rail would provide a way for readers to get information quickly and easily. In TruLife, readers quickly can find out about stories that are inside the section and also get notices of important events happening in Kirksville during the weekend. In sports, the rail provides times and dates for upcoming on-campus athletic events, standings and a quote of the week.
Hopefully readers enjoy the new design of the Index. If there are aspects of the new design you especially enjoy or other elements of the design you would like to see change, you can leave a comment on the blog. I’d appreciate your feedback.
Thanks for reading.
– Blake Toppmeyer
The times, they are a-changin’ and after years of dragging its feet, the Index is going to make an effort to catch up with the journalism industry and improve its online delivery in 2009-10.
I’m Blake Toppmeyer, the Editor in Chief for the Index, Truman State University’s entirely student-produced weekly newspaper.
For years, the Index has shown continued progress in making its print product something readers can rely on for quality news. We’ve made every effort to track all the major stories on campus and also highlight some of the top news in Kirksville. But although our print product has remained strong, during the past several years, we’ve slowly fell behind the rest of the journalism industry in terms of how we use our online portal.
In the past, the Index Web site mainly operated through a “shovelware” process, simply taking the content that was in Thursday’s paper and shoveling it up on the Web site. Overall, that worked out OK. Having a Web site gave alumni and parents a way to access our product instantly. But we’ve never done much more than that with our Web site.
We’re hoping to change that this year, with this blog being one of the elements of our effort to make the Index more appealing online. This blog’s purpose will be to take readers inside the decisions that I, along with the rest of the staff, make on a week-to-week basis in assembling our newspaper. I think readers sometimes are uncertain about why newspapers do what they do, and readers genuinely would like to know the reasoning behind some decisions.
This blog won’t reveal all our secrets. Some things have to be kept in the newsroom. However, I hope it can help explain maybe one element of our decision-making to readers each week.
But hopefully this blog won’t be the only improvement to our online product. This year is the first year the Index has a staff member with the title “multimedia editor,” and I’m hoping the creation of this position will help boost our Web site. Basically, this position was created in a fairly simple manner. For years, the Index had two assistant news editors, while sports and features had one assistant editor each.
This method of staffing was necessary for a while, but over time, the need for two assistant news editors gradually decreased. Thus, the Index dropped the second assistant news editor position in April, replacing that spot with a multimedia editor.
Hopefully, our online readers already have seen the impact a multimedia editor can have for our publication. For the April 30 issue of last year, our multimedia editor (John Moenster) compiled a year-in-review audio slideshow. Rather than telling the story in newsprint, we thought it would be much more effective to recap the 2008-09 academic year with photos and audio.
Then, in May, Kirksville was struck by a devastating tornado. John quickly assembled an audio slideshow that had multiple photos of the damage caused as well as sound bites of people affected by the storm.
I was not in Kirksville at the time of the tornado, and I know I for one truly appreciated John’s coverage of the storm. It provided a way for me to see the actual damage. Hopefully his work was useful to other students home for the summer as well.
We’re hoping those two audio slideshows are only the beginning of what the multimedia editor position can add to the Index. This weekend, John and one of our photographers, Mayank Dhungana, will be working to compile photo galleries of Saturday’s Freshmen Move-in Day. Check out our Web site early next week to view those galleries.
And please keep this blog in mind when you visit our Web site each week. I’ll try to make a post about once a week.
Thanks for reading.
– Blake Toppmeyer
