Via College Media Matters, news that the paper formerly known as the Daily Universe at BYU is cutting back to a weekly print publication. You can read more about the decision at the Daily Herald.

I’ve long held that more publications will head down this path, as the Red & Black at Georgia did earlier this year. And I’m glad they dropped the “Daily” from their name, because “Daily” is a worthless appendage in an age of 24-hour publishing ability.

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As much as possible, we try to stay clear of politics on this blog, but there’s a pair of bills before the US Congress that, if passed, would have a huge negative impact on the Internet we all know and love. The bills are the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

A number of Web-based companies are blacking out portions of their sites today in protest against the measures, including Wikipedia, Google, WordPress, Reddit, BoingBoing, Craigslist and others.

The Internet isn’t broke, and there’s no need for a new US law to attempt to fix it, with all the unintended consequences that entails.

The best thing US citizens can do is contact their elected representative to oppose the acts. You can find information to do so here.

Here’s more information:

Wikipedia

Electronic Frontier Foundation (PDF)

Reddit

WordPress

Google

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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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By Mark Plenke
Adviser, The Lions’ Roar Online

Editors at the Lions’ Roar, the student paper at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minn., decided last spring to drop their print edition and go totally online. The decision was difficult because the paper had published continuously since the school opened in the late ‘60s and had a good reputation and a loyal audience among faculty and staff.

The editors had noticed, though, that there just weren’t enough reporters, editors and photographers to do a consistently good job of putting out both a print newspaper and a website. They’d also noticed that the number of newspapers they were recycling was getting bigger despite a dynamic redesign and stepped up efforts at social-media marketing.

So they pulled the plug.

Here’s what happened and what we’ve learned:

• There were complaints, both during the informal public-comment period last spring when they made the decision and this fall when the news racks stayed empty as school started. But we didn’t hear from a single student; a few faculty said they missed the print paper.
• The students and I did a good job of letting people know what was happening, including a campaign that used the empty racks (Can’t find a paper?–look online!) to promote the switch.
• Readership went WAY up. The number of unique visitors to the site is triple what it was last May. The comparison I like the most: Lions’ Roar used to print 2,000 papers and close to half were recycled. In the first full month of school this fall, the website had 2,893 unique visitors and comparable numbers for October (2,821).
• The key to success was giving up the student fee money that would have been used for printing (about $7,500 a year) to secure a promise of weekly access to the database of student email accounts. The webmaster now sends a weekly update of what’s on the website to every student email box, and we publish the same hyperlinked mini-home page to an employee portal so staff has one-click access to the site.
• The biggest growing pain was getting students to understand that they weren’t putting out a paper every three weeks anymore, that news had to be covered, reported and posted in a hurry (still working on that one, but it’s gotten a lot better lately).
• Many more slideshows and video stories are being produced now. It’s no longer a medium for feature stories only.
• Writers are using more web-friendly forms, especially lists.
• Blogs have replaced columnists, a really good change in terms of the writing. It’s much tighter and brighter.
• Students are thinking more visually because it’s the best way to get a story promoted on the home page.
• Happily, a few advertisers (but none of the national agencies, unfortunately) have decided to go online with the paper.
• The one minus has been the loss of social time when layout night disappeared, but we’ve started scheduling staff events (a pizza-and-pop party in the office this week, for example) to help replace it.

I’m biased, but I think it’s fair to say the change was a big success. The site has three times as many visitors as it did last spring and at least a thousand more readers than the print paper had each month. I also think the staff is being served well because they’ve learned to report news when it’s still news and they’re broadening the professional skills they’ll need to find a job when they’re done with school.

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