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By Lauren Rabaino, on May 14th, 2009%
Summer is here and the living is easy– unless you’re a journalism student. For you, the summer means extra time to catch up in your ever-changing industry. You have no time to waste. Here are a few ways you can effectively use your summer to enhance your news site and/or journalism skills.
1. Start a blog | Individual project | Level: beginners
When employers Google your name, what will they find? The more often you blog, the higher up your name will rank on the search results. But blogging is about more than SEO. Blogging will strengthen your mind, your thoughts. A blog is a place for you to develop ideas you have about improving your news site or publication. If you build a community on your blog by linking out to others, then your ideas can be criticized and improved upon by commentors and other bloggers who respond to your posts.
If you don’t want to blog about the journalism industry, blog about your passion. If you have a second major in economics or a minor in women’s studies or you love horseback riding, blog about that. The more you blog, the more you will develop your voice as a writer.
Get started:
Continue reading 4 productive summer projects for j-students
By Lauren Rabaino, on May 6th, 2009%
If your newspaper hasn’t asked the big question yet, it’ll likely come within in the next year or so. The Daily Bruin dealt with it on a large scale, and I dealt with it this week on a small scale. When should you resort to selling ads on the front page?
There are a few questions . . . → Read More: Running ads on the front page
By Lauren Rabaino, on April 27th, 2009%
UPDATE: Our own CICM intern was among the UWire 100. Congrats, Lauren! – bryan
Today UWIRE announced the winners of its second-annual UWIRE 100 with yours truly included on the list.
From the press release:
UWIRE, a free membership organization for college student media, announced today the second annual UWIRE 100, which honors the nation’s top collegiate journalists. . . . → Read More: 2009 UWIRE 100 announced
By Lauren Rabaino, on April 27th, 2009%
Update II: here is College Publisher’s response – ed.
Update: Full disclosure – Lauren’s newspaper, the Mustang Daily, is partnered with CoPress and after her CICM internship, she will join the CoPress team.Â
Since the Mustang Daily switched from College Publisher to WordPress two weeks ago (through CoPress), my inbox has been flooded with questions about the process. For all of you out there who still have lingering questions, this guide should provide all the answers .
The decision: Should you or shouldn’t you?
If you answer “yes” to one or more of the following, then you’re ready for the switch:
- Tired of not controlling your primary advertising spots?
- Wish you had an intuitive, user-friendly interface to work with?
- Ready for your site to not look like the hundreds of others in the college media world?
- Want it to be quick and easy to change the look, feel and content of your site?
A CoPress post entitled Can WordPress solve our College Publisher woes? from late September summarizes it nicely:
It (College Publisher) hasn’t been an open, adaptable system that allows students to truly innovate. You can’t open up the hood and fiddle around, or even replace the tires, because you don’t own the car. CP just lets you borrow it, in exchange for taking the profits from those gargantuan ads. That’s their business model, not necessarily a bad one for all customers, but inherently limiting.
If you’re in the same boat — and sorry for making assumptions, but you probably are in that boat — then now’s as good a time as ever to move on to a better system.
(If not, then I’ll quote an old inspirational poster cliché: “Change is not necessary. Survival is not mandatory.”)
Continue reading Ready to leave College Publisher? Here’s how
By Lauren Rabaino, on April 21st, 2009%
 Have you ever deleted a text message without reading it? Most people wouldn’t, which makes SMS text messaging a potentially valuable tool for news organizations.
Use of a texting service is different than a mobile site or iPhone application because it delivers news to the reader without requiring the reader to seek it on his own. All he/she has to do is sign up.
I can see how it’d get annoying — perhaps spammy– but the service is all opt-in. If you have high-quality content, this won’t be an issue.
Barack Obama’s campaign is proof tha text alerts can be successful. He texted alerts to his supporters and even broke news of his VP via text message.
It baffles me that most news sites which offer text alerts bury the feature somewhere on the site. Pro news organizations like Tampa Bay Online offer text alerts, but the feature is hidden under the “tools” option.
The New York Times offers the service too, but again, it’s a hidden option that most readers probably don’t realize they have. Even a Google search didn’t yield results for LA Times’ mobile alerts, which only leads me to assume they don’t offer the service.
The option to subscribe for text alerts should be offered prominently on the homepage, right alongside the option to subscribe to RSS.
OaklandNorth.net, a project out of UC Berkeley, is a great example of college media that offers text alerts and features it on their homepage (found via Richard Koci Hernandez).
The best texting service is designed with narrow subscription options (i.e. specific categories/sections of news alerts) so your readers receive only the news they want.
Continue reading Mobile news alerts: An underused tool
By Lauren Rabaino, on April 20th, 2009%
This week in CollegeJourn chat, we talked about reinventing the journalism school. If we could create a j-school from scratch, what would it look like? The two main arguments were:
Experience-based education: Daniel Bachhuber led the argument that the ideal undergraduate journalism program would have one year of learning the basics — ethics, writing, media law — and three years of internships and jobs. Credits for jobs and internships would be merit-based.
Liberal arts-based education: Samuel Rubenfeld argued the best way to prepare for the journalism industry is to have a strong base in economics, law, humanities, social science, ethics, math, economics, business, law and politics before pursuing a job or internship.
Continue reading How would you reinvent the journalism school?
By Lauren Rabaino, on April 13th, 2009%
(Full disclosure: CICM intern Lauren Rabaino is the online and multimedia editor for mustangdaily.net).
Today marks the end of one long journey and the start of a new one for me as the online editor of the Mustang Daily. Even before I was online editor, I had a vision of making the Mustang Daily’s Web site something . . . → Read More: Mustang Daily leaves College Publisher, launches Wordpress site
By Lauren Rabaino, on April 13th, 2009%
1. Crime map
Estimated time to produce: 30 minutes a week
If your campus puts out a regular police log — which most college police departments do — setting up a crime map like this one is easy and your readers will love it. Go to Google Maps and under the “my maps” feature, set up your . . . → Read More: Three easy features that add value to your site
By Lauren Rabaino, on April 6th, 2009%
Although the Pacemaker finalists for 2009 are by no means the only college news sites doing innovative things, they must be doing something right to merit the ACP’s “highest honor.” The following are a few tips from web editors of the winning sites:
On print
An effective way increase online traffic is to promote your website in the . . . → Read More: Advice from a few Pacemaker finalists
By Lauren Rabaino, on April 2nd, 2009%
There was a time when I’d get upset at reporters and columnists who responded to comments on our news site. My rationale: It was unprofessional and nonobjective. But that was before I understood that the Web is a two-way conversation.
If done appropriately, reporters and columnists can use comments as a means of building credibility instead of . . . → Read More: Don’t be afraid to let your staff leave comments
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