Saturday marked the 6th blogiversary of this here effort. Since nobody reads blogs on Saturdays, I’m marking the occasion today. According to the most official source known to humankind, the anniversary is usually celebrated by gifts of iron, sugar, or wood objects.

About 130 posts over the last year (of 1,930 since the beginning), all but a handful by yours truly.

As I wrote last year,

On a personal note, there have been numerous people I could and should thank for the assistance and support over the past five years. Foremost among them are Chris Carroll and Ralph Braseth, who set this blog in motion in late 2005 with an e-mail asking me to set up a web site for them. “I’ll set up the site, but you have to provide the content.” You can see how well that worked.

I should also thank the many advisers who read and contribute in even small ways to make this blog what it is, and to College Media Association, Inc., for keeping this thing alive.

I’d also thank the many industry experts, young journalists and wizened professionals whom I’ve bugged over the years for interviews or assistance.

And, as always, my colleagues in the Journalism Department at Eastern Illinois University for their continued support of a non-traditional publishing format.

Hard to believe that when we began, YouTube was just taking off, Facebook was still limited to colleges and high schools, and nobody had even heard of Twitter or the iPhone or iPad.

Maybe it’s vain to mark anniversaries like this, but blog years are like dog years – longer than human years. I’ve watched many start up, burn bright and then flame out over the years. So it’s worth remembering every once in a while – even if I have to do it myself.

I’ve got some new ideas for the new year, and the new template is part of that. Keep reading, and contributing, so we can keep pushing college media forward.

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(This was just announced. You’ll note a change in the header, and the press release reproduced below)

College Media Advisers, the organization of professionals who train and support student-produced media on college campuses, has changed its name to College Media Association.

The change is intended to reflect the association’s broader mission, according to CMA President David Swartzlander, assistant professor of journalism at Doane College.

“The name College Media Advisers implied that we might not offer services, information or importance to someone who was not an adviser. That’s simply not the case,” Swartzlander said. “CMA strives to serve all who work with college media – professionals and educators in advertising and business, broadcast, digital and editorial.

“The new name will allow CMA to better define its role in the changing media world. Under the new name, we can become one voice for all college media professionals,” he said.

The association started in 1954 as the National Council of College Publications Advisers and in the early 1980s changed its name to College Media Advisers. CMA has more than 750 members representing colleges and universities in 50 states and Canada.

CMA offers training and support to its professional members and serves thousands of students annually at its national conferences and workshops. Details about the association’s events, services, code of ethics and more can be found at collegemedia.org.

“While CMA has changed its name, its mission remains clear – to provide services to all who advise college media,” Swartzlander said. “Those services members have known and used in the past will not disappear. And CMA plans to offer more services in the future. We’ll just do so with a revitalized, inclusive vision – and a new name.

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As I started looking through the list, I realized there were a few of the sites on the list that are no longer updating. In fact, one: College Rag (which I wrote about in 2008), appears to have ceased to exist altogether. I didn’t link to their name, because it appears to have gone dormant, replaced by an ad site.

I don’t have so much of a problem with people who stop updating their personal web sites or blogs. People get new jobs, they decide they don’t have as much to say, or they want a break. That happens to all of us. But I do regret when sites go totally dark. It’s a classic case of link rot.

I’m trying out a WordPress plug-in (Broken Link Checker) to see if I can clean up some of the link rot that’s happened over the past 5 years. I’m also writing this as a reminder for any college media outlet with extensive online archives to occasionally check if your outbound links are still functioning.

As for the blogroll, I’ve reorganized things a bit. I realize that putting bloggers and journalism-related sites into neat little silos based on some descriptive term (industry, new media, academia, college media) didn’t always accurately describe the blogger or the content of the site. So now, I’ve put everything into three categories: Organizations, Others, and Fallow.

Fallow means a site that hasn’t been updated in a long time. These sites still have good information, but they’re not currently being updated frequently. Organizational links are self-explanatory – these are “corporate” sites, with a wealth of evergreen information put out by a journalism-related non-profit. Everyone else falls into the “others” category.

I would still encourage you to check out the sites on the list (it’s on the right, below the Twitter widget).

I’ve heard it said that site visitors don’t use blogrolls (lists of related sites) anymore. I wonder if that’s the case? I will certainly use them on occasion. At I think they are helpful for new visitors who might want to further explore the particular mindspace your site is trafficking in.

Related articles

• Blogrolls. Does anybody use them? (gypsyroxylee.wordpress.com)
• Svonk.com Promises the End of Dead Links on the Internet (prweb.com)

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The stories produced for the CICM workshop in Louisville are now up on the Mapping Main Street site.

Mapping Main Street is collaborative documentary project funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

Related articles

• Editing at the CICM Main Street Stories workshop (collegemediainnovation.org)

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As best I can tell, today marks the official 5th anniversary of the founding of this weblog. Yes, here is the first post.

It’s been a busy five years. Approximately 1,800 posts (about 1 per day, including 1,600 by yours truly), several workshops, numerous consultations and conferences, two contests, three interns and over 200,000 visitors. The staff here at ICM would like to thank those who have contributed, those who have stopped by and commented, and those who quietly read along.

On a personal note, there have been numerous people I could and should thank for the assistance and support over the past five years. Foremost among them are Chris Carroll and Ralph Braseth, who set this blog in motion in late 2005 with an e-mail asking me to set up a web site for them. “I’ll set up the site, but you have to provide the content.”

You can see how well that worked.

I would also like to recognize the support from my colleagues in the journalism department at Eastern Illinois University, who see the value in my research interests in this area and encourage me to continue.

As for the future, we’ve just begun. Thanks to College Media Advisers, Inc., we’ve got some exciting workshops planned for the future, and I’m still plugging away trying to keep up with the tsunami of changes in the news industry.

Stay tuned.

(photo courtesy flickr user Rob J Brooks under Creative Commons license)

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