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Ahh, some people will take this the wrong way. I apologize in advance. But I do think it's reasonable to give some much needed criticism. Which I know is pretty ironic for me to be giving it, but no-one else seems to be saying it. :\
Though, before I do start, congratulations on lasting a year. Considering many other fansites only managed to throw out one or two issues, it's quite an achievement!
I was talking to Matthew about this, and I was giving a few suggestions about the informer such as "involve the community more than SOTM etc" and so on. He said various things and I came to the conclusion that If you can write, you would be on the informer.
I've never really been too amazed by the informer, admittedly I didn't really do anything to help that but I see it as a "collection of essays". Articles are written in a manner to be informative (hence the name informer) and are very rarely entertaining, or read, by those who aren't interested in them.
Let's take the PSP vs DS article for instance. I for one, was attracted to this because I have a DS, and I enjoy playing it. It's a fun console. But the article was written almost exactly how I would write an essay on Romeo and Juliet. I'm not sure if you've ever read an essay on a Shakespeare Play, but it's not really bedtime reading but more of something you'd read if you wanted to know whether to go and watch the film for example. It's pretty informative and not really entertaining, but it gets the point across. The writer believes a PSP is better than a DS.
Runescape Updates in general, to me, are pretty pointless if it's just telling us what the update is. People who read this newspaper are directly linked to RuneScape and possibly over 95% of them already know that we got new jewelry this month. There really is no reason to copy information from the knowledge base and call it a newspaper article. Nor is there a reason to explain what the new quest is about, people make quest guides within two days. The writer/s should go into more depth about the updates and discuss what they would change and the benefits of the update, not just say "we had this."
I'm not particularly sure when the comics were implemented into the newspaper, but it's a step in the right direction. I don;t have the same humour as Alex 43 or Karl 67, but it's certainly more entertaining than an essay. It isn't "nice to look at", but that's not really important.
I'm not going to touch tech because I'm uninterested in it, and I deem it inappropriate. Interviews.. fine. Nothing wrong there. Same with Apps of the month, that's fairly informative but isn't the type of article required to entertain anyone. Browser Wars.. I think we've had enough of that now. Manyas Mayhem - Not really my type of humour to be honest, really just an assortment of silly ideas which are dragged out a bit too much, like family guy.
In conclusion, I think the informer is boring. It's focusing far too much on being informative and not really entertainment. It's useful for a newspaper to be informative about certain things but dragging things out, trying to be funny when you're clearly not, writing things like essays and pointless articles which have blatantly been copied from the knowledge base are keeping the newspaper back.
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