Journalism Kerning Inspector

Being a complete novice to journalism and apart from reading the newspaper daily since high school and having looked over the text book I really knew nothing about journalism.
But as I listened to Tracy Collins I was enthralled with the amount of information he was sharing with us (I'm hoping to get the powerpoint!). I began to search the background of newspapers, fonts, layouts and saw how many different aspects of journalism and newspapers there really are. Just fascinating.
I began to think and jot down ideas for presentations and in what order I might present them to next years staff. There is so much background information and I think it's all very important for all journalism students to know where journalism came from and where it's at and where it will go to and continue to change. I'm thinking virtual newspapers.

And then there was what I'm calling The Kerning Effect.

I can't believe that as I'm walking along NOW I have begun to look around looking for this. I usually walk and drive (oooops!) looking around at everything BUT now I find myself looking at the spacing...kerning of signs and labels of business fronts and item labels. I've found one but it was before coming here and it's amazing how quickly and smugly the site administrator attempted to place my student-staff of The Russ  into a bad light. I knew my student-staff while very girlie girl and very voracious when it came to eating (and I thought the football players could eat when I coached) considering they are all pretty thin. But the one male student that was on the staff had an inclination towards everything Japanese. No he isn't Japanese but Japan is in him.

He had drawn a cartoon and we placed it in our only hardcopy this past year. I had looked it over several times with my editors and asked Forrest about the Japanese lettering or kanji in particular and even checked it myself.

So everything checked out and it was published and distributed. Within one day the principal came to me letting me know that the word "shit" had been slipped in. I knew she was wrong but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the freak she was talking about. She showed me and it was the Japanese word for "welcome" but because Forrest had drawn it and the layout editor had adjusted the sizing it had affected the kerning. Well even though none of us had seen it differently but she did and she jumped all over it.

But what surprised me more than that was how quickly the small student-staff united and defended what they had published, kerning aside. I was so very proud of them!

Now I will continue my search for kerning miscues and in all languages :D

Gabriel Senteno
Padawan advisor
San Diego High
San Diego, Ca.