Daily Illini Corrections for Monday, Sept. 8

At the University of Illinois, we have an outstanding newspaper that is produced soley by the students on campus. No matter how good it is, the paper can always be improved upon, and those of us who work there are constantly trying to make it a better publication.

Today's paper looked as if it needed a lot of editing work. For instance, in the front page story about Student Trustee Paul Schmitt resigning from his position, the lede began with the date of his resignation. The date was over one week old, so obviously this story could have been run then. If they were going to hold off on the story, than the author should not have put this information right away in the lede. Furthermore, the lede would have been much more powerful had it started off with the announcement of the resignation of Schmitt as Trustee, not the date of the resignation, which isn't the most important information.

Another story in the Sports section was misleading. In the lede, the author writes, "nobody told 1966 Illinois alumna Lois Diller there was an age limit for the 2008 Alumni Weekend round-robin tennis tournament." This implies that there is an age limit for the tournament that Diller was not made aware of. However, the author was merely trying to express the fact that at age 63, Diller was not too old to play in the tournament because she is a very active person. Nowhere else in the story does the author talk about the age restriction, so it becomes clear that he wanted a creative opening for the story. While I understand this idea, I think it is important to make sure that your audience is not mislead, as I was. I even thought this story was about age discrimination for a while!