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4 productive summer projects for j-students

May 14, 2009 in industry news

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:

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Running ads on the front page

May 6, 2009 in College Media

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 your staff will want to ask before pursuing the decision:

  • Where do you stand (ethically) on running front-page ads and why?
  • What’s the projected annual revenue you’d get from it?
  • Is this a last resort or are you planning ahead (what other alternatives are there)?

Now, for my personal take on the issue.

Despite the unpopularity of my decision among my colleagues and advisors, I support the concept of a front page advertisement, but not as a permanent solution to newspaper budget problems.

The general arguments against front page ads are as follows:

“They will ruin our credibility.” In the case of the Daily Bruin, this may have been true. Or if you’re running an ad for a restaurant next to a positive restaurant review, that’s questionable too. But the “credibility” issue has nothing to do with where in the newspaper that ad is, but how it’s presented relative to other content (i.e. that example would still be considered ethically wrong on page 5).

“Newspapers traditionally haven’t put ads on the front page.” Throw tradition out the window. Traditionally, did newspapers run user-generated content? Traditionally, did newspapers produce video content? Relying on tradition hinders innovation. And, anyway, the convention of empty front pages didn’t start until 30 years ago. It’s not really a tradition.

“It would take away front valuable editorial content.” For newspapers that run wire or AP content, this argument of “valuable editorial content” is invalid. Although I’m not equating an advertisement to wire content, I do believe that if the front page content is not yours and not local, you might as well make money off that space.

Front page advertisements are not a permanent solution. Student newspapers need to be pursuing revenue outside of the print product if they’re looking for long-term sustainability.

This is where front page ads can help. Experimentation with web advertising is risky and it will fail time and time again. Extra money gained from front page ads can be used as “cushion” revenue, so to speak, while your staff works to figure out how to best utilize ads on the web — because you’ll never flourish online if you’re too scared to try it.

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2009 UWIRE 100 announced

April 27, 2009 in industry news

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. The UWIRE 100 were selected from more than 825 nominations — representing students from more than 135 schools — submitted by professionals, students and educators. A UWIRE panel evaluated each candidate based on demonstrated excellence in the field of collegiate journalism.

Four members of the CoPress team (Daniel Bachhuber, Adam Hemphill, Greg Linch and Emily Kostic) were selected. I also recognize a names and faces from the Twittersphere (Anthony Pesce, Jackie Hai, and Emily Ingram, just to name a few).

Congrats to everyone. See the full list here.

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Ready to leave College Publisher? Here’s how

April 27, 2009 in College Publisher, Websites, Wordpress

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. 

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.”)

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Mobile news alerts: An underused tool

April 21, 2009 in ideas, Mobile

iPhone SMS alert from the New York TimesHave 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.

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How would you reinvent the journalism school?

April 20, 2009 in industry news

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.

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Mustang Daily leaves College Publisher, launches WordPress site

April 13, 2009 in College Publisher, Websites, Wordpress

(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 spectacular, and that vision has come full circle with the launch of our new WordPress site, hosted and supported by CoPress.

The Mustang Daily has been with College Publisher since 2006 when CP bought over New Digital Media. Since the launch around 11 p.m. yesterday, a common question is, “How long did the switch take?” Here is a brief timeline:

  • December 2008: I first heard about CoPress via Twitter and instantly DMed them for details
  • January 2009: E-mailed CoPress informing them that we were “very seriously” interested in joining
  • Late February 2009: Acquired access to our College Publisher archive
  • Late March 2009: College Publisher database transfer was complete; we started working on customizing our design
  • April 2009: Official launch

About four months after I first heard of CoPress, my the new site is up and running. That’s a quick turnaround (thanks CoPress).

The switch goes far beyond design. Structural changes that come with the new site:

  • Hired an additional copy editor
  • Rescheduled the copy editors to work day shifts (and shorter night shifts) so we can post web-first
  • Trained all reporters and editors to post straight to WordPress (instead of e-mailing articles and saving them on our server)

Now that I don’t have as much responsibility for posting articles, I plan to spend more time working with reporters to develop high-quality multimedia. With full control of the site, you can also expect to see more web-only content (see my earlier post about features I’m working on).

We welcome any suggestions on how we can improve the site so far. We’ve already received and followed through with a few suggestions from Twitter followers, we’d love to hear yours.

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Three easy features that add value to your site

April 13, 2009 in ideas

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 new map. Plot each crime from the police log onto the location in which the crime took place and spice it up using relevant icons and colors.

Why your readers will love it: It’s a digestible way to read about crime on campus. It’s also more personal because they can see where crimes happened in relation to their own locations.

Update the map once or twice a week.

2.  “Trending topics” pages
Estimated time to produce: 1 hour initially, 15 minutes for each additional update

I stole this idea from Twitter. Much like Twitter lists “trending topics” on their home page, you can maintain go-to pages for the trending topics and issues on your campus. After the initial setup, maintaining the pages is simple.

For example, at Cal Poly, a big issue is a possible college-based fee increase. It’s something students care about and want to read more about. On our “trending topics page” (which we call “hot topics” but you can come up with a catchier title than that) we link to recent articles about the topic, letters to the editor and columns, as well as all relevant multimedia.

Students can find everything they need to know, and it’s accessible from our homepage (our brand new homepage on our brand new web site, might I add).

3. Event calendar using Google Calendars
Estimate time to produce: 1 hour a month

Although I couldn’t find an example of a college publication doing this (if you have one, let me know in the comments and I’ll add it to the post), a Google Calendar of campus/community events could easily become a popular feature for college students. UPDATE: Batmoo from the comments informed me of a gCal system on The Boar (a student-run magazine for the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo) and adds some insight: 

 The flexibility of gCal allows us to embed a small version in our sidebar on the home page, and full-scale version on its own page. It’s super easy to use, and changes propagate instantly, plus it has built-in support for RSS and iCal, which is a nice bonus. Downside is that it’s not searchable.

At the start of each month, editors can compile a list of events — which they’re probably doing anyway for story ideas — and throw them onto a calendar.

It’s a win-win situation: reporters can use it as a resource for staying on schedule, and readers can use it as a resource when planning their weekends.

Now comes the bonus: Spend the time to develop these pages and promote them (in print if possible) so they gain a steady flow of traffic. After that happens, throw a few ads on each of these three pages and you’ve got yourself an extra flow of money every month.  Not bad, eh?

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Advice from a few Pacemaker finalists

April 6, 2009 in College Media

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 print edition of your paper, and entice readers to additional online content not found in the print version. This has been fairly effective for us. -Raeleen Badham, Webmaster, The Emery Weal

On social networks
Use as many tools as possible and embed! Everything is done on social networking sites now and why should college publications be any different? Be where your readers are. They are on a lot of these sites using them and it always helps when they see you are too. -Emily Kostic, Web editor, The Whit

On free multimedia tools
We’ve recently begun dabbling in interactive graphics using a site called Dipity. We’ve previously used Flash to produce interactive graphics, but Dipity gave us another cost-effective way to serve our readers with innovative media. -Kristen M. Daum, Editor in Chief, The State News

On yearbooks
Yearbooks are seen, much like newspapers, as an outdated and dying media. We have created our site and our Facebook page to try and modernize, promote interactivity and drum up interest in the content of the book as we work on it. We hand code the site, offer a blog, and update Facebook religiously. We funnel users from Facebook back to our Web site with photos and blog content. We also run campaigns throughout the year to raise page views. -Megan Garner, Co-Editor, 2009 Razorback (yearbook)

On YouTube
Whenever a professor made the suggestion to create a YouTube account, I hit myself over the head. Duh! Everybody else is using it, why not news organizations? Also: From what I’ve seen maps and timelines are really popular, usually much more popular then the stories themselves. So I would suggest exploiting those avenues as well. -Chris Essig, Assistant Online Editor, The Daily Eastern News

On free services
There are a lot of great services available for free and experimenting is key both to this time in our careers but also this period in the field of journalism. Try as much as possible and stick with what works. -Jasmine Linabary, Online Editor, The Whitworthian

Full disclosure: I am the online editor for the Mustang Daily, which is also a Pacemaker finalist.

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Don’t be afraid to let your staff leave comments

April 2, 2009 in Newsrooms

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 diminishing it.

In 2007 I wrote to Poynter’s ethics guru Bob Steele to get advice about this very topic and he said via e-mail:

Most news organizations would not publish letters or online comments written by staff. An alternative is for a staffer to write a guest column but the editor has final judgment on whether it gets published. Your staff member has Freedom of Speech rights but that does NOT guarantee him access to your paper nor your website.

But even in two short years, those rules have changed substantially.

The dynamic of the Web (which has been emphasized in journalism through blogs and Twitter) allows readers to communicate directly with writers.

The discussion that can unfold between readers and reporters adds value to your articles, whether it results in fact-checking (commenters as “watchdogs”), a new angle, or the building of community. And really, why shouldn’t your reporters be able to respond?

Here are a few general guidelines about letting news staff comment on articles:

  • If a commenter presents a question about a fact or issue within the article, the reporter should clarify or answer the question when possible, even if it requires additional reporting
  • Reporters should not argue personal opinions in comments of a news article they wrote
  • Columnists or op/ed writers should, however, have the freedom to editorialize in comments and respond to counterarguments, as long as it doesn’t turn into personal attacks
  • For full disclosure, all members of your staff who respond in comments should clearly identify themselves as members of your news organization
  • All comments from your news staff should be professional and accurate; it’s not a medium for reporters to interject with speculation or rumor
  • Don’t let “professional” throw you off though– comments can  still be personal and casual. Let your reporters be the real people  that they are. Your readers will trust them more

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