This week marked the beginning of new weblog initiatives at two college newspapers (that I know of): The Daily Illini and the Daily Kent Stater.
Both initiatives have had opportunities over the past week (two basketball players injured and Chief Illiniwek’s retirement at UI, and relentless snow storms at Kent State) to practice the blog platform.
I’m obviously a big believer in training journalism students in the weblog form. But be very certain that blogging is more than writing a little extra on the side. There’s a social aspect of the activity that has to be nurtured. And there’s the relentless drive to keep posting new items. I always encourage new bloggers to keep writing and learn about the format. I’ve seen too many blog attempts fall flat after a couple of weeks or months of posting.
So, kudos for starting. Now keep it going.
Thanks to CampusByline and MerandaWrites for the pointers. And if any other college papers are starting blogs, leave a comment or e-mail me: scmurley -at- gmail.com.
on Feb 18th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
I couldn’t find an e-mail address so I’m leaving a comment here. I wanted to highlight some of the coverage we’ve been doing this week at the Penn State Daily Collegian for Thon 2007. Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon (Thon) is the world’s largest student run philanthropy and culminates in a 46-hour dance marathon. A team of reporters and photographers were present throughout the event submitting some 20 news updates, over 100 photos, and more than 50 blog posts. All occurring in near real time. The whole staff did a great job and I wanted to show off their work. You’ll see some of it on the home page tonight, but most of the continuing coverage stuff is archived at http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/news_specials/07thon/07thon.asp. I am a big fan of your blog and I look forward to more tips and advice.
on Feb 21st, 2007 at 8:25 am
The Corsair has been blogging for about a month now. We have two regular bloggers and hopefully more to come.
I conducted a training session in etiquette and ethics to get everyone started but it’s been a slow process.
Mike Rutschky is a columnist for our newspaper and has really embraced blogging. He writes about random things that are on his mind at the time.
Peter Gunn writes about the Pensacola music scene, from the bar bands to the symphony.
Our student government guy hasn’t started blogging yet, so I’ll have to track him down.
We selected a new editor in chief yesterday and I encouraged him to do some blogging too, perhaps about how The Corsair operates, the stories behind the stories.
To find our blogs right now, go to http://blogs.ecorsair.com/
We are hoping to have the site linked to ecorsair.com by the end of the week. College Publisher set up the WordPress shell for us.
Christina Drain
Adviser, The Corsair
Pensacola Junior College
on Apr 2nd, 2007 at 9:55 am
I sure wish my college newspapers website would get a clue. They sparingly use multimedia to make there website interesting and do a poor job. The podcast are boring and despite having an editor that started tvnewser.com, we don’t even have a blog. Check out my blog if you care to read about the ineptness of The Towerlight.