Zephyrus

Starting at the top, the I-35W bridge article by Ben Perszyk in my opinion is missing the key element of "who cares?" While the bridge situation is interesting, it doesn't affect teh majority of the students at EHS. Personally, I used that bridge at least a dozen times a day for my job this summer, so it hits home for me, but I doubt there are that many students at EHS that worked full time as a driver downtown. The solution to this problem would be to get some interviews with some students or adults at teh school that use the bridge frequently as use that as teh spin on the story. While professional quotes are great, you need to relate it to the high school or it shouldn't belong in the paper.
I think the article by D.J Adams entitled "Safety First" about the lockdown drills was a solid article and very good as far as relating the topic to the high school is concerned. In fact, I just had a similar occurence where my teacher just kept on teaching during the most recent drill, so at least for me I am able to relate to the topic. Overall the article is solid, combining timeliness, proximity, and conflict. The conflict piece is the part about some teachers following the rules and taking the drill seriously, which other teachers ignore it and view the drills as an unnecessary annoyance.
One aspect that I do not approve of is the manner in which the paper handled the letter to the editor. First of all, you never publish a letter to the editor unless you have the name, if someone is going to complain than they should be willing to reveal themselves and own up to what they are saying. So in that respect, I would have never published that letter to the editor. Secondly, I would not have published a response. Letters to the editor are so people can express their opinion about a topic or article, they aren't supposed to be ongoing battles of words between the writers and the readers. It's fine to publish letters to the editor in your newspaper, but leave them as letters to the editor, don't turn them into a battle royale between the journalists and a hostile group of angry readers.
For the article on the hopkins theater, I think that this was a good topic to write about because it relates to area. The story however, does nto have many key elements that should be present, it doesn't have timeliness but makes up for it with the relavence that the topic has for teenagers in teh high school on a tight budget.