Update 2: I received another e-mail this afternoon that things are not as good as they first seemed at ECSU. Gibson said the SGA funding was for $10,000 to print a magazine, but no money to fund the website or new equipment. He said they will be looking into legal action in the future. Further details as they become available.
Update: I found out yesterday that the Campus Lantern’s funding for this year was approved by the Student Government Association. Congratulations to the student journalists at ECSU.
Editor’s note: James Patrick Gibson is the editor-in-chief of the Campus Lantern newspaper online news site at Eastern Connecticut State University. We first found out about the Campus Lantern earlier this month when the Student Government Association on their campus refused to fund the news organization because they had done something truly radical - gone from a print publication to an online-only news service. As far as we know, this is the only case of a student newspaper ceasing print publication to go entirely online. If anyone knows of another, e-mail us. I was fortunate enough to get the chance to interview Gibson about this transition. The interview was conducted Wednesday, Oct. 4 via instant messaging. This is an edited transcript of that conversation.
Murley: First off, tell us a little bit about the history of the Campus Lantern and how you arrived at the decision to go entirely online.
Gibson: Sure. The Campus Lantern was founded in 1945. The university had many different names from that time, between Windham Normal School to Eastern Connecticut State College. We actually have a picture of old issues in our office, the first cover in 1945 was hand drawn, typography, artwork everything. It’s been produced weekly as a compact tabloid, for most of it’s life. Arriving to students on Thursdays/Fridays
The first idea about the change came about a year ago. We were trying to work with the university to get a complimentary online presence, like most universities.
Then Editor-In-Chief Prentice Tracy and I tried to work with the campus IT department. We tried to schedule meetings and get some webspace. Originally the site would be very simple and just a basic compliment to the printed edition.
But the discussions fell through, and the idea was scrapped for most of the following year.
The spark picked up again, when we were thinking about setting up an account with College Publisher. Our neighbor, The University of Connecticut, right up the street, uses College Publisher as their online system. The Daily Campus was a daily, and updated their online page pretty regularly. We kind of wanted something similar.
The semester had almost run it’s course. During our last meeting with the President. (the meeting is known as a President’s breakfast, where student groups could share their concerns, and a meal with the president of the university).
He wondered why the Lantern hadn’t had an online presence, and wanted to know what plans we had to get it online. At that point, aside from College Publisher, we had none.
It really picked up over the Summer, when the new editorial staff and I started messing around with Joomla, and realized that it was so incredibly easy to submit and edit content on the system, we couldn’t let it just pass us by again. .
Murley: At that point, you were still thinking about a print edition with a complementing online version, correct.
Gibson: We were considering what we could do. Originally, yes we were going to keep the print edition. We actually had just made plans with our publisher to convert the paper to a full tabloid. But, initially we were going to keep the paper..
Murley: So when did the final push come to just go all online.
Gibson: I don’t know if it was a push, then more of a realization. We did quite a bit of digging around online, about colleges hosting online versions of their paper. That really didn’t move us, as we know, no college as far as we know has abandoned their paper. No, it was more like the articles we read from Dan Okrent and Rupert Murdoch, and the Economist. They all spoke of a few major themes, being the decline of print advertising dollars, the shift of the web as a source of media for people our age.
The breakup of Knight Ridder, etc. We realized that as future journalists, we could not ignore the facts and trends that the industry is showing. It’s a hard world out there for newsprint..
Murley: So you decided to go online only. What was the next step? How did you decide to let the rest of the campus in on your transition? (I realize you wrote some of this in your editor’s note on the site, but I want to get it on record here for folks who might not see it otherwise.
Gibson: Well, we knew at first that if we just dropped the bomb on the campus, the initial reaction would be shock, and probably negative.
We decided instead, to try to smooth the readers in with a clever marketing campaign, to build up some intense buzz.
The idea was to print out hundreds of 8.5×11s, and stuff them in our newspaper bins, plaster them all over campus. In front of buildings, in windows, on boards, everywhere. The message: Where Is It.
Now, Many people didn’t understand it initially, but the word got out, and caught like wildfire. Soon the whole school was a buzz with “Where Is It?” People were curious what “It” was, and where did it go.
Anywhere there was a display bin. We changed the message. It said “Everywhere - 9/14/06.
So this enigmatic message, eventually caught on as, something to do with the Campus Lantern..
Murley: I guess at this point I should ask, do you have an adviser? If so, what did the adviser think about this.
Gibson: Yes we do. His name is Edmond Chibeau. Initially, Dr. Chibeau was taken aback with our idea. I remember his words exactly, “It would be a disservice to the students and the university..
We had to show him the site, and our process first. He warmed up to the idea really quick, now he’s very supportive of what we do. He’s been an incredible asset to the Lantern. He’s drank the kool-aid, if I may quote you guys..
Murley: So what was the hardest part of switching?.
Gibson: Mmm, that’s such a good question.
I think the most difficult part was explaining to new members, advertisers and staff what we were doing.
The technical aspect was very easy, compared to working on the printed edition. We just had to install and learn how to use Jooml.
Telling everyone why, and how we were no longer printing the Lantern was so tough.
Although, the second toughest thing, was losing www.campuslantern.com. A school newspaper group that just started up this year bought it right before we did. TWO DAYS Before we were going to buy ours. The whole reason for the delay, was because of the SGA holdup. We would have bought both domains long before then.
Murley: You mentioned that the technical stuff was easy. How are you folks training staffers to work differently for the web? Are you planning more multimedia or other web-related tools.
Gibson: First part of your question: Joomla has made our workflow so much easier. Writers can now just register an account and submit stories and photos from anywhere, anytime. The system alerts us to new content, and the copy editors go to work, and we do our final edits before stuff hits the page.
It’s very streamlined. Luckily, Joomla was much easier for people to learn than Quark or InDesign. That’s how we did it last year, our editors did layout. And they aren’t very good designers, that’s for sure. Which made my life a living hell, as the design editor last year. Now they can focus on writing and assigning content.
Second part: Multimedia is one of the big reasons we moved. We’ve already done a few videos on our site already. It’s incredible to capture an event, get back to the office, edit and publish in the timeframe of a hours. It’s really incredible.
We also plan on doing soundslides and hosting podcasts. There’s a radio show on campus called “Reality & Beyond” that has expressed interest as hosting their talk show as podcasts on our site. We’re also planning on hosting shows from TV22 on campus. One of our big goals is media convergence. Having the Lantern be the source of on demand media at Eastern..
Murley: What has been the reaction from the community (outside the SGA)? As an extension, talk about the site traffic and how it compares to your print distribution.
Gibson: The community reaction is so mixed, a lot of elderly people seem really disappointed about it, as well as some longtime old advertisers, but others have been totally wowed by our system and were surprised that we could LINK to their website. Although it’s difficult to think of the terms “community” on the internet.
I got this great letter from an Alumn, he was the Editor of the Campus Lantern in 1987, and told me about fighting the good fight, especially when it comes to technological changes. He fought the SGA to by the first Macintoshes for the Lantern, as you know up until then, it was all manual paste-up and camerawork.
He actually found out about us through the site, and I don’t think the print version could ever generated such a response.
Our traffic has blown away the printed version, easily. We’ve gotten nearly 200,000 hits since the launch on the 14th. That’s incredible, it hasn’t even been a month yet, and we’ve gotten that much. We even average about 80-100 visitors a day, most come back 1-2 times a day. It’s been very positive for the staff, especially in light of all the negativity from the SGA..
Murley: Which is as good a transition as any . where do things stand with the SGA right now.
Gibson: Right now, we’ve submitted two new funding requests, because our budget is totally different. This will be the first time the Lantern staff has been paid in it’s 61 years.
The first, involves us printing a quarterly magazine, paying the staff, buying a few new Macs for video editing, among other things.
The second is everything but the magazine.
They still haven’t made a decision yet. They insist on polling the student body, which I know isn’t going to work out in our favor. People are just too emotionally attached to the printed piece. Although, interestingly enough, freshman and sophomores are much more comfortable with the transition, because they really have no connection with the old Lantern. Most of them, after seeing the old Lantern, prefer the new version anyway.
Essentially, from our standpoint, SGA has no right to base their decision on a student poll. If they do decline our funding, we’ll be forced to bring suit. We really have no other choice.
We’re just waiting for their decision now. (it’s a really tense week!) We’re really unsure what is going to happen, which is causing some unease amongst my staff. They’re getting tired of working for free..
Murley: Well, let’s focus on a more positive aspect - you mentioned “community” earlier in the conversation. What are your plans related to building community for your web site.
Gibson: We wanted to really redefine our role, and I think that means changing the definition of a newspaper.
Traditionally, the newspaper did fulfill a role as a community information source, with some entertainment, and a bit of classifieds.
We wanted to change the role of the Lantern to be more of a social community site, where not only could we report on traditional news issues, but we could open discussion and debate. We could allow our readers to rate, and show us what they like.
We also wanted to open up the calendar and classifieds to the public, to allow people to take the site into their own hands a bit. We have some community features, such as profiles and small networking features, but we plan on expanding those. Our eventual goal would be to setup a social bookmarking type section, where there is more community editorial, along with the traditional news. .
Murley: How has the effort at community building been received.
Gibson: Pretty good, most of the students who have signed up accounts and messed around on the site, love it. Things like the classifieds are picking up slowly. Especially because we’re offering them for free to students, faculty and staff. People really love the commenting and rating systems.
I think it’s a bit difficult for some to get past the “newspaper” mentality, this is really a different animal..
Murley: On a different topic, has there been any other press coverage of this transition? Because as far as I know, you’re the only student newspaper that’s attempted something like this.
Gibson: Yeah, we were written in a local newspaper, The Norwich Bulletin (A Gannet Paper), we have also done an interview with the Student Press Law Center magazine. I think we are the first, we really tried to search out other colleges who have done the same, and we haven’t found any yet. We’ve been working on a press release to send to the AP and Reuters and see if something bites. If we are indeed the first, we could garner quite a bit of attention. We really are in disbelief that nobody else has done this yet.
Murley: One final question: if you could make recommendations for a college newspaper that was considering something like what you’ve done, in single sentences, what would they be.
Gibson:
- Get some good funding.
- Know your legal rights, inside and out.
- Hire a really good graphic designer, and web developer. Pool their skills.
- Let go of the idea of a paper, it’s a lot easier once you’ve done that.
- For God’s Sake, make sure your ad manager can sell, you’ll need it.
- Read, Research and then do it some MORE.
- Make sure that your web host is very reliable, and don’t host on campus.
Murley: Thanks for your time, James.
on Oct 10th, 2006 at 9:45 am
[…] Check out the first big post at the Innovation in College Media blog. It’s an interview with the editor-in-chief at the Campus Lantern, a student paper at Eastern Connecticut State University that recently converted itself into an online-only publication, but now is battling with student government, which has threatened to pull the paper’s funding if there’s no print edition. […]