Washington U’s Student Life

Sunday and Monday, Chris Carroll (pictured above) and I got the opportunity to visit with students and board members of Student Life, the student newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis. The editors we met with were interested in making their web presence more robust, but unsure how to go about it. We spent about two hours with them on Sunday talking about ways they could do so without detracting from their print publication.

On Monday, we met with their board of directors, which is composed primarily of professional journalists from around the country  (places like the Wall Street Journal, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Newsday). We talked about where college media was in developing new media skills (based on our survey results) and some of the impressions we had from the Student Life meeting and looking at the web site.

It’s always rewarding to see people put the stuff you talk about into practice, and so today, there’s a map (accompanying a story about hair salons) on the Student Life web site, and a slideshow.

Sometimes, all it can take is showing a few examples of what other students are doing to get people pointed in the direction they already want to go.

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