"Torched"

A brand new page on the Johnny Jungle website called "The Jungle Chronicle" which will replace the inside page has its debut article called "Torched" which reviews the annual "courtside" by the school's paper the Torch. I think it was pretty poor but you give a read and tell me your thoughts.....


Also a new edition of Jungle Jester is up on the Chronicle for a good quick laugh. I will will be updating this page weekly.

A brand new page on the Johnny Jungle website called "The Jungle Chronicle" which will replace the inside page has its debut article called "Torched" which reviews the annual "courtside" by the school's paper the Torch. I think it was pretty poor but you give a read and tell me your thoughts.....


Also a new edition of Jungle Jester is up on the Chronicle for a good quick laugh. I will will be updating this page weekly.

Dave, I want a page dedicated to me after I clap board on you at the BATTLE OF THE BOARDS

Marco Baldi's comedy page?

Marco Baldi's comedy page?

For Daves sake, I hope this goes better than his last sporting event

http://youtube.com/watch?v=oIR04-R6oFY&feature=related

there was no winner in that video

I thought the pictures they had in the "Courtside" issue were pretty sick. But I thought you were being pretty rough on Devendorf in your article, I mean he did hurt us quite a bit at the Garden despite their loss to us...he is a third year starter and still a primary scoring option on one of the top teams in the big east even with their slow start. But you are right about the timing of the issue, and the stuff they wrote are all things people like you and  everyone on this site have read millions of times already.

Point is Bub they didn't tell me anything(I'm pretending to be novice fan) that I didn't know. How about letting me know that Syracuse has 2 freshman predicted to be co-rookies of the year instead of Dorf. Dorf killed us last year and I'd expect similar results this season but he isn't a player to watch out for. What about Laing, Sam Young, McNeal, Harangody, Reynolds, etc. These would be players I wouldn't know if I were a novice fan that maybe I should be looking out for.

Why wasn't anything mentioned about the 4 Big East games on campus? Thats huge for students nor were any of those teams mentioned in their Big East Preview. As a writer you have to know your audience and their audience is St. John's students and they didn't give anything appealing to them. Kids will read them and kill a good 30 min but not get much out of it. The Torch could have given so much more but didn't. They work very hard in their production as the pictures and quality was awesome but the writing IQ wasn't there. This was an opportunity to educate the students on the game and they flopped. Also if this were released before or right around game 1 it would have been a bit better but not after almost all of the ooc home games are over and some kids aren't even around to read it due to finals and not hanging out in the cafe's inbetween classes ala commuters.

You had some decent points. Of course some of the articles could have been better, but that can be the case with any issue. Not all of our writers are journalism majors, and they're all learning, as am I. I think our guys did a great job of reporting as best they could and I'm proud of the work everyone put into it.

First of all, Devendorf is a preseason All Big East pick as voted by the coaches, so I don't know how you can say we shouldn't feature him. Perhaps we could have put a few more players, but we did what we could with time restraints and man-power.

The fact you were 'pretending' to be a novice fan doesn't really doesn't make it a realistic situation.. there was plenty of information in there for people who aren't familiar with basketball, and that's who it's really for. Sure, someone who is familiar with the program can pick it up, but no one on the Torch staff is a college basketball pundit and as such "insider" information and the like shouldn't really be expected.

As for the release time, we were set back about a week due to some technical issues, however, the articles had been already written for a couple weeks to seem like a sort of preview. I'll take responsibility for that one.

In any event, you're totally entitled to your opinion and we appreciate the fact that you acknowledged the hard work we put into it, but frankly it seems like your opinion is one without merit. You definitely had some good points, don't get me wrong, but a lot of it seemed like nitpicking.

Our writers and staff performed to the absolute best of our abilities on this and, as I said, we're extraordinary proud of the final outcome.

Again, some of your criticisms are entirely legitimate and things that we can defiantly work on for next year, but for what it's worth we feel that the product we put out this year was tremendous and a huge step for the Courtside series, and saying it should be "torched" is a completely asinine over-exaggeration that completely negates any validity we thought your website had.

Regards

I've sung the praises the of the Torch before but this time I felt disappointed with the writing especially with the debut of the new magazine style. I voiced my opinion which is just that my opinion. I acknowledged the hard work and I know there is a whole boat load behind the scenes work that goes into producing this. I thought the layouts and the magazine was very nice but the quality of information was subpar in my opinion and I thought it could have been more informative.

The delay in production makes a lot of sense and I messaged you about the release date as I was under the impression it would have been coming out sooner but you failed to respond. If you were to have voiced this to me obviously my opinion would have changed.

I also understand we aren't going to have Mike Lupica type writers for every article but I expect everyone to be on their "A" game for the courtside. I expected better reporting like I mentioned with Stephen Pinto's article. I understand the fact that I was very critical in some aspects and I hope perhaps this serves as a motivator for next year and even the next Torch issue because I wish the best for the Torch as I do for St. John's as a whole which is the reason I work so hard on creating this site.

It is fair to say that the courtside should be "Torched" is an over exaggeration but its a great headline and attention grabber and as a Journalist you should be able to appreciate that. I can't say it enough that I am a supporter of what the Torch does but I will continue to hold a high standard as I want to see the bar risen. If you want to call it nitpicking thats fine but wouldn't you like to raise the bar? Thats all I want and the Torch is a good paper but it could be great and the gap between the two isn't far away.

As I said a lot of your points were fair.

That being said, I don't have a problem with the writing. It's a student newspaper, so neither the writing OR the reporting will be perfect. And that's OK, because everyone is learning.

PS- I didn't even know I had any messages in my inbox, sorry about that.

The young'uns got they pens goin. They all celebratin what St. John all bout. Much praise to y'all. Keep yo heads up.