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I’m starting a second round of college media coverage of the various Occupy protests around the nation. I’m particularly hoping to find some coverage that features use of online/multimedia components, as the example above from the Temple News.

I’m also going to keep this post “sticky” at the top of the blog for the next couple of weeks. If you’ve seen student media coverage of the protests, e-mail me: scmurley -at- gmail.com and I’ll add a link below.

TTN – Occupy Philadelphia from The Temple News on Vimeo.

The Red & Black (Georgia)

• Occupy Athens protesters rally to ‘end economic corruption’ (w/video)
• Photo of the Day: Occupy Athens protest
• Occupy Athens members plan to protest outside Arch until Wall Street Clears

The Temple News

• National movement hits Philly

The Daily Pennsylvanian

• Over 1,000 Philadelphians gather to plan Occupy Philadelphia protest
• Professing support for Occupy Philly
• Complete coverage on one page!

InsideVandy (Vanderbilt)

• Vanderbilt student arrested in Occupy Wall Street protest speaks
• Occupy Wall Street spread to Nashville (video)

Golden Gate Xpress (San Francisco State U.)

• Photos: OccupySF protesters block entrance of Wells Fargo headquarters

The Northern Light (Alaska-Anchorage)

• Happening Now: Occupy Anchorage
• Occupy: Many ages, many issues
• Occupy Wall Street needs to capitalize on the moment with specific action (editorial)

The Ithacan (Ithaca College)

• Protesters ‘occupy’ Ithaca
• Ithacans flock to Wall Street to protest economic disparities
• Ithacans occupy Wall Street
• A Day at Occupy Wall Street (video)
• Listening to the 99 percent (audio slideshow)

The Signal (Georgia State University)

• Occupy Atlanta inside the headquarters
• Raging peacefully

Collegiate Times (Va. Tech)

Various coverage in print (Issuu edition)

The State News (Michigan State)

Lack of attention nixes Occupy MSU

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By Rich Cameron
Cerritos College Mass Communications chair

The Dec. 8 issue of the Cerritos College Talon Marks will stand out from other issues of the paper, in more ways than one if you are wearing 3D glasses. That’s because four pages in the paper sported color 3D photos. To aid the readers in seeing the photos pop out at them, each of the 4,000 copies of the paper had a free pair of 3D glasses affixed to it.

The 3D experiment is the brainchild of Talon Marks editor Joey Berumen. (editor@talonmarks.com). In his front page column on the experiment he says, “With the recent revitalization of 3D movies, video games and even TVs, it seems the next logical step would be for newspapers and other forms of media to follow suit.”

Elsewhere he adds, “Other than running three dimensional photos, how else can newspapers utilize the technology? Perhaps the cornerstone of the print media –advertising– can hold some of the answers. After all, a 3D Victoria Secret advertisement wouldn’t be eye-catching at all, would it?”

Ironically, the paper includes a color ad that unintentionally sports 3D aspects because of its color scheme: an unexpected boon for the advertiser.

A pdf of the entire issue is available for download on the www.talonmarks.com website. You can view it online here.

To accomplish the project the students first had to learn new PhotoShop skills to convert 2D photos into 3D.

Then they had to find a suitable subject. Originally, the students settled on a campus art show photo page. The show consists of a number of sculptures and mixed media that lent themselves to 3D photo presentations, but as the students found the conversion easier and easier to do, photos on all four planned color pages (thanks to advertisers wanting color) the project spread to other photos.

Then the students had to locate and talk their faculty adviser into authorizing purchase of 4,000 pairs of inexpensive CMYK compatible 3D glasses (they make RGB versions, too). When the paper returned from the printer, an assembly line of students was needed to affix the glasses to each copy of the paper before distribution could take place.

Why do it? Well, there are the editor’s words above. Clearly it was a gimmick designed to get campus attention; getting it for something good/interesting is far better than getting it for bad reasons. And who knows, it may attract future readers/staff members.

For the staff members it is something for pride, but they’ve also learned new PhotoShop skills. While they may never be called on to repeat them, the fact that they 1) thought outside the box, and 2) had to learn new skill sets to accomplish their idea clearly were good reasons to do it.

If they ever do it again, they will work harder to get an advertiser to pay for it. They only half-heartedly tried this time, for instance, to find an advertiser who would buy an ad on the glasses themselves and charge enough to buy the glasses.

In another innovation this semester, the Talon Marks started including QR scan codes in its print edition that help readers with smart phones connect to audio and video multimedia pieces on the newspaper’s website.

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Vanderbilt’s InsideVandy has been pushing the envelope recently in their online offerings. While they’ve been doing multimedia for a while, they are starting to package their efforts into more user-friendly experiences.

Check out these attractive packages: A City Guide, with restaurant reviews and an interactive map; a history of housing package with 360 panorama photographs from different dormatories; and a baseball season preview which features audio, statistics, and an interface similar to their basketball preview mentioned here earlier.

Check these packages out for inspiration. Are you doing something noteworthy online? Drop me an e-mail at scmurley -at- gmail.com and I’ll post about it.

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If your student media outlet web site has undergone a facelift recently, drop me an e-mail, or a comment so we can make note of it here.

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via Twitter, @katherinemiller points to a couple of basketball season previews from InsideVandy that are worth noting for their multimedia prowess. Check out the men’s and women’s previews. If you click on a player’s photo, you get an audio breakdown of the player’s strengths, along with a breakout box of pertinent stats. The design is clean, the navigation simple, and the topic worth the effort.

A couple of minor issues: if you click on the players, you get audio that starts automatically, which is kind of annoying. Better to let the user decide to click the play button and hear the audio (see my rant about ESPN’s annoying auto-play here).

Also, there’s no advertising on the page. I would think this would be the type of multimedia project that would be relatively easy to sell to an advertiser. So why no ads? With revenue streams so important, the news side and the ad side need to work together more closely on big multimedia projects like this to maximize the revenue potential.

Also, there are no credits on the page. I know from talking to Chris Carroll that at least four students (including Katherine Miller) worked on the project. It would be nice to see their names somewhere on the page to give them credit, especially as they start looking for jobs in the future.

Still, a good example for others to look at and learn from for future seasonal sports previews. Any other examples you’d care to share? Drop a link in the comments.

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