Responses
Jonathan Kleinow, Editor-in-chief, The Journal, 7/15/2005, 2:04:21 PM
We have something we call the "Gorlok Gauge" - the Gorlok is our school mascot - which asks a question of four students/faculty/staff and lists their responses next to a picture. Not groundbreaking, but sometimes insightful and often funny.
Jonathan Kleinow
Editor-in-chief
The Journal
Webster University
St. Louis, Mo.
Stephen Yeargin, The Pacer, 7/17/2005, 4:10:05 AM
The best way, as we've found, to generate interest in the Op/Ed section is to give something for your readers to talk about in the next issue. Your editorials (some newspapers need to dust off their definition of this -- it's the one with no name attached) should illicit either rousing support or intense disdain. Neither your editorials nor your columnists should aim for middle ground. Say something!
During the 2004 election cycle, we ran a series called "Politics on Campus" (http://pacer.utm.edu/specials/2004/politics/) that drew a pretty good bit commentary. Your approach to the Opinions section should be less different from your approach to news than one would think. Look for the 'feature' story, and drive the content, don't follow it.
We recently ditched the "Campus Voices" section (similar to the idea above), mostly because the interviewer either misquoted or missed the real quotable answer. We also found that most of our readers skipped over the box entirely, thinking it was an ad for something.
Rutherford Rankin, 7/27/2005, 5:07:27 PM
As the editor of a smaller college paper I've found that giving regular students a chance to get their voice heard in the paper is really good. We have a section called the Phone Forum where we have an answering machine set up with a message asking for opinions, comments and suggestions that can be printed. On deadline day we listen to the message and print as many as we have space for. A lot of people take advantage of this and it's nice to be walking around campus and hear someone say "My phone forum got printed!"
Another thing I tried last semester was opening up a guest column space on the op/ed page called the students' voice. Not too many people took advantage of it but the ones that did used the space effectively. I just laid out some ground rules and invited students and faculty to just write a short guest column. It can be about anything. It's almost like a letter to the editor but the readers feel more connected seeing it as a column rather than a complaint.
Chris Cinquemani, Op/Ed Editor, Pipe Dream, 8/2/2005, 11:09:34 AM
We recently did a pretty big revamp of our Op/Ed section. One thing that really helped people turn to and read the page were the graphics we incorporated. This was especially true regarding the graphics on the new color page of the section.
One thing that we just started that has been really successful is something we call "Office Space." Office Space is an opportunity for members of our executive board write a column even though they are from different sections. (Since most of the time your E-board is composed of your best writers, you are almost guaranteed a pretty good column) Our first office space column was written by our Assistant News Editor, and she wrote about going downtown to the bars. Our Marketing Director wrote about being a gossip queen. To deal with issues of objectivity Office Space columnists cannot write anything regarding a political or policy stance in their columns. Check www.bupipedream.com from April 5 on to read some Office Space columns.
Joseph Terrell, The Exponent, 12/6/2005, 4:43:49 AM
It is really interesting to see what everyone else is doing. In our Ed/Op section we have the standard letters to the editor and an 'advice' column called "Dear Suzy", which has been very popular among the students. Regarding the opinion section, we try to keep it filled with mostly independent submissions and less by contributions of our staff writers. It can be really difficult to get people to approach hot-button topics, but as the individual above said, someitmes you need to 'spark' debate and hope someone will respond to it.
We also have a feature similar one previously described called "across the campus". This is a question posed to four individuals each week, and just as someone noted, the readers who are chosen to appear in this section get really excited about it. However, we place this feature in our news section as a sidebar as opposed to the ed/op.
km, 12/21/2005, 10:39:42 PM
You could try a "sound off on this topic" that has a question posed by one of the column topics and have the students visit your website to take the survey. Print last issue's results in chart format in the paper and pose the next question--
For example, have a chart on last week's or yesterday's answer to say "should we allow casinos in our town?" and then pose the new question "should children be told to believe in Santa claus?
you can use Survey Monkey or zoomerang for your survey tool. They are inexpensive (free for under 100 responses per month). Perhaps the college already has such a tool.
These surveys will get students involved, get them to your web page and add a graphic element to your often-too-gray column pages.
