Today, I got a note from an adviser who shall remain anonymous about the dearth of web activity in colleges in a certain large state.
Fully two-thirds of the community colleges in this state have NO WEB PRESENCE whatsoever.
Add this to the approximately 20 community colleges in California who have no web presence (number extrapolated from Rich Cameron’s JACC Blog), and that’s at least 40 community college media organizations that need to get online - pronto!
The same day, I saw an e-mail on the CMA Listserv about an adviser who took her students to visit the local daily. The “new media” efforts at this daily were depressing, to say the least. Shovelware, lack of access to the web site by reporters, ancient equipment, etc. Needless to say, the adviser was wondering about the online/new media efforts she was making with her students.
And then there is this thread at Mindy McAdams’ site about online internships at news operations.
Finally, one of the things I’m running into as I cruise the web looking at college media sites is that there is a real lack of “new media” or innovation in some operations’ web sites. Some of these sites aren’t just shovelware. They are throwbacks to ancient times of web site design. There aren’t any podcasts, audio slideshows, video, or even comments on articles. And I’m not talking about small operations, but large state university dailies.
It would be tempting for me to get depressed about this state of affairs, but that does no good whatsoever. Instead, it means we need to redouble our efforts. There’s more work to do than our limited hands can accomplish.
The news environment is changing, and professional media outlets who ignore the need to innovate will find themselves in dire straits. College media who ignore the need to train for the future - not the past - are failing the students they purport to serve.
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