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 first.

One slight complaint – the stories on the site don’t have links to the multimedia presentation. For instance, this story: Fire spreads on hills, inches toward Poly Canyon, doesnt’ contain a link to the audio slideshow, which would be a great addition to the story.

Thanks to Paul Bittick for the heads-up.

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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.

First, let’s look at a simplified description of how most stories work their way through the college news editorial structure:

A student reporter goes out, gathers information, and writes the information up in a MS Word document. The reporter then e-mails that story .doc to an editor (or puts the .doc on the newspaper server for editing). The editor looks at the .doc, then passes it along to the copy editor, who looks at the .doc and passes it on to a page designer, who takes the copy out of the .doc and pastes it onto a page in InDesign. After it’s laid out and printed, (ideally) it gets a final read through by another editor and further corrections are made. Finally, the pages are sent to the printer and the web staff gets their hands on the InDesign (Quark) files and begins putting the info on the web site.

Sound familiar? I’ve spoken to several folks from student newspapers, and their workflow is very similar to this system (although some will use InCopy or another expensive workflow system). To get something on the web before it appears in print requires an extraordinary effort to break that chain of copy.

So I’m pushing a radical re-thinking of how you do business. Start putting the web content management system into the workflow at the front end. This could be as simple as using Google Docs as a word processor instead of the bloatware that we know as MS Word. You could try WriteWith, which allows collaboration on documents, or you could go whole hog and just have the reporters type their stories into the web site content management system. If you’re on College Publisher, that’s what it was designed to do. Other content management systems (even the WordPress system that runs this blog) allow you to set up levels of permissions, so everything a writer types into the system doesn’t immediately appear on the site. As long as the writer has internet access, they should be able to type the content into one of these places and e-mail a link to the editor.

Then – another radical thought – give your senior editors permission to publish material to the web site. That’s right. There’s no good reason every story should have to funnel through an overworked and underappreciated web staff. Those senior editors are (hopefully) chosen because of their experience and seniority. They approve stories to appear in the print edition, they should be approving stories to appear on the web as well.

One immediate positive effect this would have is freeing up your online staff to devote time to doing things specific to the web – like creating multimedia content, for instance.

Objections? I’ve heard a few:

Reporters need to meet face-to-face with editors when they turn their copy in: Okay, so require them to meet with an editor when they finish the story. That’s not a function of a Word document or a printed copy of the story. Here’s a thought: tell the reporter, “if you don’t meet with an editor after finishing your story, it doesn’t get printed.” Tough love, right?

We find lots of mistakes on the finished layout: I’ve heard this response several times. My somewhat cynical reply is: “So?” Expect more. Demand more. I realize that’s somewhat idealistic, to expect most copy errors to be caught before they’re laid out on the page and printed in 75 percent size. So, an alternative is to put the content in the CMS and then hold the final “publish” button until the layouts are corrected. But on breaking news stories, or really important news, the option is still available to publish the story to the web before that print edition is finished.

But won’t that keep people from reading the print edition? No. Your online audience isn’t generally the same audience as your print edition. Students pick up the print edition on their way to class. Faculty, staff, alumni, prospective students, and interested outsiders read the online edition (and a few students read as well). So “scooping” the print edition shouldn’t affect your readership one bit.

Our editor reads every story before it appears in print: And you can make sure they read most stories before they appear on the web. That can remain the same, if you (and your student staff) wish. But what if breaking news happens and your editor is out of town? Or incommunicado? What if the web editor is nowhere to be found? Do your senior editors have permission to access the web content management system and publish a story to the web – a story that could be updated and changed later? Would they know what to do if they did? If they don’t, why not?

Do you have other objections? Let me know. I honestly think this will help college newspapers move forward with their Web sites. If I’m wrong, please let me know.

Is it going to take extra effort to get staffers to change a system that’s been in place for years? Sure. But the end result – an integrated print/web presence – will be well worth the effort.

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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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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:

1. Read the news
2. Forget you have an opinion.
3. Know the difference between news and features.
4. Make contacts.
5. Get a life.
6. Don’t sit around waiting for an email reply.
7. Learn how to spell.
8. Be open to new experiences.
9. Read books.
10. Know what you want to get out of this – and chase it.

Be sure to go to the link above to read all of the explanations.

So here are a few additions I’ve thought of, off the top of my head – where you can see that there are thoughts taking off, because there’s no hair there.

1. Watch good video – It’s not enough now to just be able to tell a story with words. I love words, but words don’t always do the story justice. Look at good video documentaries. See what they do well, and what could be improved.
2. Engage in conversation – I’m not as much a stickler as Paul about forgetting that you have an opinion. Be willing to admit mistakes. Respond to readers. Engage your audience.
3. See stories from all angles – It’s not always about the photograph, either. Sometimes, a map can tell a story as well as a graphic in the newspaper, or a timeline. Know which types of online artifacts can help your news story.
4. Embrace the Web – Use hyperlinks. Practice blogging. Push for online-first news publishing. Use the online content management system in your workflow. Don’t accept the old standards of turning in .doc’s to the copy editors. Demand that they embrace the future instead of dragging their feet in the past. Follow bloggers on your campus. Let them help you ferret out story ideas. Don’t EVER dismiss the power of the online medium to drive readers to your publication.
5. Be willing to fail – Try innovative projects. Throw things at your editors that they would never expect. Look for ways to push the envelope of storytelling on your campus. I guarantee if you do you will be more prepared for the future of journalism than your peers.
6. Ask “why?” – NEVER be afraid to challenge the conventions of journalism. Some of the things we’ve done for so long have been done because “that’s the way we’ve always done them.” This goes along with the point above about being willing to fail. If we accept the received wisdom as wisdom – without critical evaluation – we do a disservice to ourselves and to journalism as a whole.
7. Think about databases – How can a story with lots of data be broken down into manageable bits of information that people can parse by their interests.

These additional ideas won’t guarantee your success in the future of journalism, any more than will Paul’s original 10. But they will be a help, more than a hindrance. Don’t just stop at print (or broadcast). The best piece of advice I ever received was to keep learning always. Keep learning always.

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Clearly, if anyone is going to consider concentrating more on their online presence, that number is going to have to increase.

Keep in mind, that question asked did *any* college media sell *any* local online advertising.

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