USA TODAY - Sept. 16

September 16, 2014

The feature headline, “Syria strikes may be joint effort” is missing a comma after “strikes.” Also, it isn’t clear which story that headline applies to. Although there is a line separating the headline from the other stories on the page, it is a little deceiving to have a headline that spans the entire front page, and it only relate to one column on the far right side. The lead of the Syria story should have been rearranged to put the attribution at the end because what was said is more important than who said it. The photo featured with the Climate Change article seemed to focus on Leonard Dicaprio, which had no relation to the content of the story whatsoever. The editor could have chosen a crowd photo that didn’t feature a celebrity.

            I understand now that the “Voices” first-hand account of newsworthy experiences from USA Today editors is a featured item in each edition, but it would still be more appropriate on the Opinions page rather than the second page of news. The period is still missing in the endnote as well. The “In Brief” is also confusing in this edition as the briefs in the first one were.

            On page 3, the story about a Pa. shooting uses the word “here” to refer to the location of the shooting. USA Today is a national newspaper, and just because the story is from Pa. doesn’t mean that readers are in Pa. Specificity is important in news writing, and it would be clearer to readers across the nation if they just used the name of the town again at that point. In the “What’s Happening Online” sidebar, the teaser “Puppy rapists gets five years in prison” is a sensational headline and could be seen as making a joke of the situation. It would be worth discussing with other editors and getting some second opinions on the wording of that teaser.

            Design problems on page 5 included a widow in the insurance story at the top left of the page, and the headline “Israel’s Arab citizens alienated in wake of war” has too many spaces at the end of the first line. The briefs had several AP errors in the copy. In the missing student brief, I deleted the word “being” from the phrase, “was being sought” because it was unnecessary to get the point across. Also, in the phrase, “driving at a high rate of speed that caused police…” I deleted “rate of” and “that” and changed “caused” to “causing.” In the California laws brief I changed, “to drive for free or reduced rates” to “to drive for free or at reduced rates,” because it makes more sense. Then the brief about a ship getting stuck near the Statue of Liberty, I took out “on” before the date, as per AP style.

            On page 6, in the caption for the photo above the fold, I deleted “on” before the date, again as per AP style. In the headline “Republicans’ fake birth control promises,” there are more than three spaces at the end of the first line. The white space at the top of the page gives plenty of breathing room, considering all of the copy filling the rest of it.