In the midst of the recent chaos surrounding Gopher football and head coach Tim Brewster being shown the door, every big news organization across the state has been writing their fair share of stories this week about the Gopher’s dire coaching predicament.

But when the news of Brewster’s termination first broke out late last weekend, two stories from different newspapers caught my attention in particular. The first story I read about the topic was plastered on the front page of the Minnesota Daily Monday morning, while the second version was a Pioneer Press story I read online later that day.

In all honesty, I have some mixed feelings regarding these stories in terms of which one is “better.” The Pioneer Press has a straightforward, hard-news lead and this story does not hesitate getting to the news—which is a key element in a breaking news story such as this one. It gives the who, what, when, where, and even the why in the first three graphs of the story. Overall, this story is short and to the point.

The Minnesota Daily, however, took a somewhat different route in reporting on the Brewster story. The way this story is written had a bit of feature-like feel to it, even though it’s essentially a hard-news story. In the second graph, it mentions Brewster’s record along with a bit of history about when he started. It also takes quite a bit of reading until the story tells the reader who will be filling in for Brewster, which was one of the big questions I wanted answered right away.

That being said, I must say that I enjoyed reading the Daily’s version of this story much more than the one from the Pioneer Press. It’s more detailed, has more interesting quotes from good sources such as the players and Brewster himself, and it touches on possibilities for a permanent coaching replacement.

Although the Pioneer Press published a solid, simple hard-news story faster than the Daily (the Pi Press posted their version online Sunday afternoon), the Daily’s version was more intriguing and fun to read.

The winner of this round: The Minnesota Daily.