Maybe you remember taking a survey last year about the KU's academic seal. Or maybe the multiple emails begging students and staff to take the survey were as memorable as the seal itself.
Basically, the survey showed you a jayhawk and then asked if you thought of KU when you saw it. Then it showed the seal and asked if you thought of KU when you saw it.
I guess everyone said no, because the marketing department decided it's time to update the design. Besides the fact that it's a picture of Moses and might not be quite as secular as it should be, it's damn ugly and unremarkable.
It's also the kind of story that could be done better on the web than anywhere else. KUJH-TV's story presented the news and showed a picture of the label, and that was nice. But after watching it, I had more questions about the seal and its history.
Many of these questions could be answered in a story in the Kansan that would include more facts (e.g., what is the University's official name?), maybe with a nice big graphic of the seal. What I'd like to see online would go a bit further, with a Flash picture of the seal that would pop up boxes with more information as you mouseover different sections of the seal, explaining what each part means and why it was included in the seal. Once proposed new designs are released, we could have a small gallery of the different designs. We could also pull the concern about the image of Moses possibly violating the separation of church and state into a sidebar, since it's a separate issue from the change of the logo, and maybe mention the Moses sculpture in front of Smith Hall. While we're at it, let's throw in a poll asking students if the whole Moses thing actually bothers them. Do they care? Did they even know that's who it's supposed to be? We could put up clips of the interviews already shot for KUJH, too, to provide some more in-depth student reactions.
Obviously, all of those components add up to a fair amount of work, and not many stories deserve that much work. Likely, it'd be a job for a 694 student with some extra time on his hands coordinate all the content. But if there are this many possibilities for a story that no one even cares about, imagine what could be done for one that's actually interesting.
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