Being at Marquette University, there are certain perks that come along with attending a Catholic university. Despite the standard break fro Christmas, we also get a break for Spring Break and Easter. The break provides a great small absence towards the end of the semester, much like fall break in the first semester. For the Detroit Free-Press though, religion is just an after thought.

On Saturday night, I went to the Free-Press's website to see if there was any preparation for Easter. I was met with coverage of the day's Final Four games, as well as general news from around the Detroit area. I quickly looked around to see if I could find any thing about Easter or Passover or any other religious holiday, but could find nothing.

On Easter I returned to see if there was anything else, and the only thing I could find were slideshows. The first was a slideshow of Easter foods, which were homemade from Linda Willette, who made linguini, Sicilian sweet bread and canolies. The photos were well taken, but they were of one family's tradition for Easter. It would have been great to see what other families were doing for Easter.

Another slideshow was from a Easter Vigil at Cobo Center. This photo gallery featured many candid shots, especially the one of the baby sleeping. I believe it is a great way for someone who is not knowledgeable in the Christian faith to see what goes on in a Mass as high profile as Easter Sunday. However, these were the only stories on Easter.

For the Free-Press, I feel like there should be a religion beat. It is extremely difficult to find a religion-based story on the Free-Press's website because there is no religion sub-header. There was no mention of Passover, no mention of any other religious practices. It would have been great to see these other religious practices, especially in something more than a photo gallery.

In a time where political correctness is at an all-time high, it's understandable for the Free-Press to have little coverage of religion on its website. But if one religion is being covered, it would have been great to see others covered. I would like to see the Free-Press to take a more active role in covering religion in the Detroit area. 

Thursday and Friday marked arguably the two most exciting days of all of sports. Sixteen games a day, spanning 12 hours, captivates the country with fans breathing sighs of relief when a team advances or lighting their paper brackets on fire when their national champion bows out in the first round. The Detroit Free-Press focused on both Michigan and Michigan State, two teams who could potentially win the national championship. 

Michigan opened the tournament against South Dakota State and was a fairly popular upset pick. The Wolverines took care of business, winning 71-56, but did so in an unusual way. Instead of relying on Naismith Award finalist Trey Burke, freshman Tim Hardaway, Jr., led the team with a career high 21 points. In the round of 32, Michigan obliterated VCU 78-53, reaching the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 1994. The victory was so convincing, Dick Vitale said the Wolverines were playing like the number one team in the nation again.

With the second half of the semester beginning, #loweclass will start to incorporate video into our stories. Therefore, we were asked to critique our beat's use of video. The Detroit Free-Press uses video in the same way that we are taught to use photos, to tell a story that advances the story being told on paper. 

The Free-Press uses video in different ways. In sports stories, the main style of video used is post-game press conferences. Readers get to see video of players and coaches answering questions. This allows for the reader to see the non-verbals of the quotes that appear in the text stories. However, it would be better if the Free-Press would use game highlights in their videos. Some readers may not have been able to see the game, so highlights would be a great way to keep viewers on the page.

As for news, the Free-Press offers its videos a little differently. The majority of stories are just accompanied by photos and allow for the text to tell the story. Then, there are stories that are told strictly through video with no text. I find these to be both refreshing while also inconvenient. For instance, I watched a video about beavers being found in the Detroit River. Was it really necessary to have a three and a half minute story based solely on an animal? The text story would have been extremely short, yet video allows the story to have some depth. So the story was told through the best medium possible, but was it worth being a story?

One area the Free-Press lacked video that surprised me was in entertainment. Before touring the website, I figured entertainment would have the most video. But the Free-Press did not have a single video piece in the headlines on the home page and had a couple in the carousel on he entertainment homepage. However, the video was used to add to the stories. For example, in the story about rapper Tone Loc collapsing on stage, the video is raw footage of paramedics checking out the rapper. I feel like this was great use of video to advance a story, yet it may have been more useful as a hyperlink rather than the dominant feature of the story.

Overall, the Free-Press uses video to its advantage more than as a disadvantage. The homepage has a multimedia section devoted to each desk of the newspaper and normally accompanies a story in some way, shape or form. There are some areas where video can be improved on, but otherwise, the Free-Press succeeds in using video to advance stories. 

Normally when I'm can choose my own topic for my #loweclass weekly blog post, I cover something sports related. However, this weekend I was going to try to cover something different for my beat, to not only give myself a change of pace, but my readers as well. But after the drama of the Michigan-Michigan State basketball game, I had to critique the Detroit Free-Press's coverage of the game.

As I was reading the article, I was happy with what the Free-Press had done to cover the game. The Free-Press had their own reporter cover the game rather than someone working for USA Today, and there were three videos of post-game press conferences, which I think more news outlets should do. Give readers the ability to not only read the reporters analysis of the game, but also what the respective coaches thought about the game. The lead in the story was also the caption for the photo on the homepage, which I think is a little lazy by the reporter and the designers of the website. But, it still serves the purpose for drawing the readers to click on the story.

Another aspect of the story that I enjoyed was "the breakdown." The breakdown highlights the hero of the game (Trey Burke), the goat (Keith Appling) and an interesting fact of the game, which in this case, happen to be the alumni of Michigan State purchasing fifty tickets so Michigan State students could attend the basketball game. I applaud the Michigan State alumni for doing so, because having fans being able to cheer on their team in an opponent's arena can give the team a little extra edge. Just ask Marquette. 

My only complaint is the story is a little short and lacks depth from outside the last four minutes of the game. Sure, the run by Michigan State in the last four minutes created the drama, but there had to have been bigger events that happened outside of the time frame. Was there a big dunk that caused the student section to erupt? A block that stopped Michigan State cold for a few minutes. A player that saw a unusual amount of minutes? The readers don't have the answers to these questions because these moments are never talked about.

The piece by the Free-Press is good though. It highlights the biggest point in the game and looked ahead for both teams. I would have liked too seen a little more analysis of the game overall, but the story wasn't necessarily an analysis of the game as much as coverage of the game. The author of the article was a member of the Free-Press and put effort into the multimedia to tell the story even more.