• Coverage & Content
• Community
• Design & Navigation
• Rich Media
• Site Effectiveness

You will be asked to provide commentary about each area and apply a score. Please review this website several times during the evaluation period.

Critique Primer

• Please read carefully the entry form material written by the adviser and students. This will help you understand the school’s individual situation and may help you shape your comments. Please consider any special circumstances as you writing your commentary and scoring.
• Please write plenty of comments letting students know what they have done well and what needs improvement. (We don’t have specific length requirements for your comments, but you might notice that some areas of the paper booklet have lots of room for comments. That’s not an accident. In the online form, form fields will expand to accept lots of written comments.)
• Please write constructive comments as though you and your students were going to be the recipients of them! Please be gentle, thoughtful and helpful. Remember how much these students have invested in this product. We want you to be honest, but we also urge you to review your comments to make sure they are as kind as possible.
• We hope the scorebook helps to make your work easier; however, we do not want it to prevent schools from trying new ideas that may not conform to the categories we have established. Please review the entry materials and website, and if the material is covered, wherever/however it is placed, give the students credit. We want to allow for non-traditional treatments and growth, but we also want to ensure the basics are covered and journalistic standards are maintained.
• The numbers printed on the scale at the end of each category are meant only as markers on the scale. You may assign a score anywhere on the scale. For example, if the markers appear at 0, 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500, you may score the category anywhere between 0 and 500, preferably in 5-point increments. Therefore, a publication may receive scores such as 135, 375 or 480 in that category.
• Please note the use of words such as “avoids,” “if used” and “may.” They do not mean that the item must occur.
• We trust your judgment. We would appreciate suggestions or concerns you have as you work through the critique booklet.
• Also, please don’t allow a school’s score to be too close (within 8 to 10 points) to the next higher award level. This causes great angst for advisers and students alike! Instead, you might increase or decrease the score accordingly based on your overall impression of the publication.
• Please check over your comments and scores carefully before you consider the critique finished. It’s easy to miss something.
• Thank you!

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