The Daily at the University of Washington is a prime example of how you don't need color to get a clean, organized paper. The photos here are tones well - a little dark on the lead photo, but still some contrast there.
Some overall observances: When it comes to photos, make sure there is a lead and a secondary and play up those sizes accordingly. Although the photo with the lead story is smaller than the centerpiece below, both photos are still pretty large and are fighting each other for dominance. One of the lessons I am learning here at the Sun Journal is that you don't have to play a photo big for it to be important. Don't be afraid to run a photo like that in one column with a tighter crop. Also, with a layout like this, try experimenting with a vertical layout some - lead story on the right, centerpiece in the middle or taking up the rest of the space and other stories surrounding it. It will help to play up the photos while allowing a bit more room and still maintain a good sense of hierarchy.
Many papers I've seen usually have a few types of fonts for headlines, but restrict one bold one for the lead story. With the floating bridge story and the lawsuit story, you use heavy fonts that are considered to be lead story fonts. Determine which story is your true lead and use the heavy sans-serif font with it, then swap to your serif for others. It helps tell the readers "this is what you should read first."
I like the added touch about how many days of school there is yet. And a sex columnist! I'm sure that gets quite a few reads. Nice move teasing to it off the front page. You probably want to back off using all caps in a teaser like the one for the features page. With many people these days associating all caps like that with shouting (thanks to the popularity of e-mail and Instant Messaging), it might seem a little heavy handed.
Overall, I like this paper and the little added touches in here. Watch the size of the headlines and the subheads, especially when choosing to center them. I prefer no more than four decks to a 1-column headline, but other papers do go five. Just make sure that the subhead below the headline isn't as big as the headline or they could become meshed together and give the appearance of a huge 7- or 8-deck headline.
