Tonight is a perfect night to talk about The Hatchet’s front page selection process. Jan. 31’s paper is a case study on how things change.
At about 6 p.m. each Wednesday night, we have our front-page meeting. Jess Calefati (senior news editor), one photo editor, our production staff and I meet to discuss which stories are worthy of the newspaper’s prime real estate. By that time, I have hopefully read all the stories, placed them down on our server and we can have a discussion about newsworthiness of each piece.
Each of us comes with ideas about stories, the production folks visualize layout and photo staff let us know about art. Today, we met just after 6 p.m. and our list looked a little something like this:
• Our centerpiece lead story was a feature by Aya Mueller on Street Sense, the homeless newspaper in D.C. It was well written, accompanied by good art and a good read.
• Our top news story was the admission numbers, which we had just gotten our hands on and minds around.
• A piece on the D.C. City Council and who they support for president.
• We had a brief on the front page that breaks the news on B.J. Novak coming to campus.
• And lastly, a story about GW Votes getting people to vote.
After the front and inside pages were largely done, I got word from Joanna Shapes and Ben Solomon at Smith Center that they thought the men’s basketball game was front-page worthy. So we had to bump the GW Votes to the inside pages. Joanna had a nice narrative of the game so at about 10:30, we switched the front page.
And the finished product looks awesome. We try to get colorful stories on the front, to contrast some of the hard news we put out. Let us know what you think.