I found my students to be creative enough to compose attention-grabbing leads, but they had a tendency to abandon the idea of the lead in the next paragraph. Thus, the rubric requires them to develop the idea of the lead. Quality quotes and smooth transitions are vital to good stories. The rubrics rough draft segment also included design processes. Once the rough draft was evaluated and suggestions made, the revision and final draft stages were a piece of cake.
Photographers have a different rubric.
They are required to turn in three photos a week, complete with captions. Having photographers work in this manner ensured visual coverage of events even when the copywriter designer might not be working on that particular spread. Photographs are evaluated according to composition, exposure and focus. For those staffs who send their film to color processors, technical quality could be omitted. Captions are evaluated according to answering the 5 W's and H, identifying all people and writing smoothly.