Students critique campus paper

A Daily Forty-Niner readership survey conducted last fall indicates that readers feel the Forty-Niner is below average in five areas while getting passing marks in only two other categories.

While only 151 out of 10,000 responded to the survey conducted November 1994, most felt the paper was lacking in the areas of news, sports, student government, faculty-staff issues , campus events and personalities.

The Forty-Niner was commended for capturing the flavor of campus opinion and entertainment news.

Jim Neal, director of Testing and Evaluation Services, helped with the survey by coding and inputting survey information for computer analysis.

The survey also provided people with an opportunity for general comments:

- "General news I can get through the major papers. I want to know more about what is going on here at CSULB."

- "I really enjoy reading about health issues. I would also like to see a regular health page ( just like sports or entertainment). I would also like to see more write-ups on the many events we sponsor on campus. Thank you for the good work."

- "What would make the Daily Forty-Niner an even better choice for free-time entertainment (or at least a little more interesting) - how about drawings for free concert tickets? How about catering less to those crybaby minorities?"

Specifically, 54 percent of readers responded that news coverage was poor or below average. Twenty-four percent felt news coverage was adequate while only 18 percent felt the coverage was good-to-excellent.

Almost 50 percent felt the sports page was below average, while 28 percent did feel the Forty-Niner's coverage of sports was good-to-excellent.

One respondent, though, did call the sports page "weak." Campus events, personalities and student government were judged to be below par by 52 percent of the responding readers. A closer look at matters close to home was suggested by one reader.

The opinion page rated a favorable 62 percent as did the entertainment page which scored a 57 percent approval of readers.

Readers overwhelmingly rejected more opportunities to read about comics, horoscopes or do crosswords in the Forty-Niner.

Survey respondents were broken down into four categories; student, teachers, staff and administrators. Very few excellent marks were handed down by teachers while administrators and staff were a bit more complimentary.

Student responses, for the most part, tended to have a greater range between poor and excellent answers. They also made up 75 percent of the survey.

Sixty-five percent of the readers fell into the 18-34 age group. Twenty-six percent comprise a group ranging from 35-54 years old.

Almost 80 percent of Forty-Niner readers read another newspaper but, remarkably, more than 20 percent said they didn't read another paper.