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Soundslides: Mustang Daily

The Mustang Daily at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has been busy over the past few days covering a brush fire and a visit by a famous alumnus – Weird Al Yankovic. Check out the audio slideshows here: Fire and Yankovic. Deadline multimedia is a good way to get students involved in producing for the web . . . → Read More: Soundslides: Mustang Daily

Getting to the web-first mentality – start with the Content Management System

A couple of conversations recently reminded me of one of my main points of contention: until college newspapers start using the web in their copy workflow, their efforts at practicing a “web-first” publishing mentality are going to be decidedly uneven.

The tragedy is that there are many tools already available to make that happen.

Check below the fold to see what I’m talking about and read a few objections.

Continue reading Getting to the web-first mentality – start with the Content Management System

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 . . . → Read More: Washington U’s Student Life

Bradshaw: How to be a journalism student

Paul Bradshaw, a UK journalism prof, writes some tips about how to be a journalism student. Great stuff (thanks to Mindy for bringing it to our attention).

Never content to let well enough be, I’m going to add some thoughts to Paul’s list. Here’s the basics of his bullet points:

Read the news
Forget you have an opinion.
Know the . . . → Read More: Bradshaw: How to be a journalism student

Selling online ads: less than half

I thought I’d throw this into the discussion of online-only publications. For the past two years, we’ve asked the question: Do any of your student media web sites include local advertising sold by campus representatives? The first year, these were the results: 44 percent (N=108) said yes. 56 percent (n=139) said no. In 2007, the numbers . . . → Read More: Selling online ads: less than half

College newspapers doing video

Megan Taylor asked today if I could point her to some college newspapers who were doing “good” video. I was able to quickly put together a list of a few colleges who were doing video online. I qualified my list with this: I’m not vouching for the “good” quality of all the videos presented on these . . . → Read More: College newspapers doing video

What’s a blog

I spent about 10 minutes with a student yesterday who was worried that her “blog” for the Daily Eastern News would become too much like a print story. Funny how we fall back into the old media formats we’re used to. So, for all of our benefit, I’m going to put down a short bullet list . . . → Read More: What’s a blog

Doing the critiques: Let’s think disruption

Meranda Watling posted a comment that I thought should get extra “play” in the main body of the blog. The Daily Kent Stater’s critiques of the print edition include the following questions – all of which are good:

What’s the most helpful or informative piece we had in the paper?
What’s the most distinctive story aimed at our . . . → Read More: Doing the critiques: Let’s think disruption

Online content: when to change?

I’ve written previously about the rising numbers of people who are coming back to college media outlets asking for removal of information contained in online archives (see the 2006 edition of Keeping Free Presses Free). I also wrote about a possible solution for those folks (see online identity management). Now, Online Journalism Review has posted an article by a college media adviser about this issue: Rewriting history: Should editors alter or delete online content?

My answer: It depends, as I explain below.

Below the fold, I’m including part of the Keeping Free Presses Free article entitled “Legal and Ethical Issues in Online Journalism,” for further information. I don’t think the publication is online.

Continue reading Online content: when to change?

Notes from UGA

As I mentioned Monday, I headed off to the University of Georgia’s management seminar for newspaper editors, where I talked about advising and also about how other newspapers covered the Va. Tech tragedy. If you’re interested, I’m including some links and expanded notes from my talk on Tuesday afternoon. I actually didn’t get to cover the second part of the discussion, and I promised some folks that I’d post further notes online. I wasn’t able to spend as much time as I’d like talking about how student news outlets could prepare for a huge news event, but these are some of the notes I had.

Continue reading Notes from UGA