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Guest Post: Lessons from Obama’s visit

April 26, 2012 in College Media, management, Newsrooms, Politics

By Erica Perel, newsroom adviser, The Daily Tar Heel

President Obama visited the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus Tuesday afternoon to give a policy speech on student loans and “slow-jam the news” on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

The big events happened early in the traditional  daily news cycle: students lined up to get into Obama’s speech starting at 5 a.m. before filing through security. The policy speech happened about 1 p.m., with the Jimmy Fallon taping immediately after. The presidential motorcade left Chapel Hill by late afternoon. Because of the timing — and because political junkies and the vast UNC alumni network would be following events from afar — the student editors at The Daily Tar Heel, the independent student newspaper, knew this story had to be covered online in real time.

Staff posted stories, videos, photographs and blog posts to present the sites and sounds of the day. They used the social networking aggregator Storify to present what people were tweeting. And then used Facebook and Twitter to promote our work and help drive up traffic to about double normal levels.

And it all happened on the last production day of the school year.

Here are lessons from the day. Not everyone will get a chance to cover a presidential visit, though if your school is in swing state, this could be your year. Even so, these lessons apply to almost any big news.

Make a plan, then plan some more

Big stories don’t always give notice. But elections, big sporting events and protests usually do. For the Obama visit, the editors started planning for the day’s online coverage at least two days ahead. There was a staffer in charge of writing blog posts. Someone in charge of getting press credentials. Someone to monitor social media. Etc. The night before, photo editors held a meeting with photographers to make sure they knew exactly what was expected of them in terms of sending photos. Photo Editor Allison Russell said her instructions were simple: She told them their photo coverage had to be the best thing they had ever shot. No pressure.

Make sure someone is back at the office coordinating the effort

We’ve made the mistake before of creating an online coverage plan and expecting it to just happen. But it won’t without one or two people in charge of corralling that effort and taking care of details. That job includes:

  • Communicating with folks in the field.
  • Making sure all content is tagged and weighted correctly so the home page displays well.
  • Editing stories for content and accuracy.
  • Editing pictures.
  • Using social media to promote new content. Twitter is great, of course, but don’t forget Facebook. In the analytics screenshot below, see that much more traffic comes from Facebook.

 Use as many different storytelling avenues as possible, but remember that they have to go up quickly

Stories and photos are easy to post, but videos often lag behind because of the lengthy editing process. In a big news situation, the video needs to go up fast.

On Tuesday, for this video, Multimedia Editor Zach Evans posted what he had early, then re-edited and reposted when another videographer’s footage from Air Force One was ready.

Online Editor Sarah Glen has played around with Storify for big-story coverage before, so she was in a great position to post what was the definitive collection of tweets from Obama’s speech with lightning speed. Sarah worked to collect the tweets through the speech, so it was able to go live immediately. Other lessons from Sarah’s Storify:

  • Search the official hashtag for the event, but do other searches to make sure you aren’t missing good tweets from people who aren’t using it.
  • Include as many picture tweets from people using Instagram or other photo apps as you can.
  • Include a mix of student journalists’ more serious tweets and tweets from non-journalists. Look for people using funny hashtags or otherwise tweeting with personality.

Promote your work and pay attention to analytics to learn what works

Use the obvious avenues to promote content — Twitter, Facebook, email blasts and Google-optimized headlines — as well as any non-obvious tools. But make sure to pay attention to analytics to see how they’re working and pay attention to where traffic is coming from.

At the DTH, staffers use Google analytics as well as Chartbeat Publishing real-time analytics. The real-time analytics are more valuable in this situation, because they can watch traffic go up or down based on the promotional work they’re doing.

The DTH has had Chartbeat, and then the more advanced Chartbeat Publishing, for about 13 months, and have found it to be a tremendous teaching tool. Watching the numbers go up and down helps students understand what drives online traffic. It also encourages them to post more frequently online when they can see how many people are reading it.

Here are Chartbeat screenshots from this morning – a more typical weekday, and from Tuesday afternoon.

 

According to Google analytics, the site had 51,474 page views Tuesday. The previous Tuesday, there were 27,014.

Have fun

Journalists live for these days. Enjoy the ride.

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Expectations are there for new hires and social media

February 29, 2012 in career talk, social media

I know you’ve probably heard it here plenty of times, but the drumbeat for online journalism skills continues to grow louder from every professional journalist I’ve spoken to or listened to at a conference or workshop this year.

When I was at the Mid-America Press Institute’s “Managing Change” workshop recently, one quote brought this back to mind. It was from Alan Herzberger, digital managing editor of The Oklahoman.

Here’s what I tweeted at the time:

Herzberger said the Oklahoman expects new hires to be active on Facebook and Twitter, and to have some followers (for more on the Oklahoman’s social media strategy, read the story at mpinews.org, along with others from the workshop).

That dovetails with something Steve Yelvington wrote recently that I though deserved some attention: The new baseline skill set, which includes this skill:

Be prepared to use social networking to further your job goals. This includes listening, engaging and promoting your work.

There are a lot of web sites out there that will give you advice about how to achieve success in social media these days. My only advice is this: Get to it!

If you’re not using social media to connect with other journalists, with potential readers, with industry sources, you’re flailing at your journalistic responsibility.

When we started this blog, one of the things we talked about early on was that news is now a conversation (that’s not my terminology, but it describes the way news has evolved). It’s more true now than ever.

 

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The information sherpa: role for journalists on the web

February 1, 2012 in General Media, ideas

(Image by Flickr user Sistak, used under Creative Commons license)

Following up on my post yesterday about information overload, I wanted to expand a little bit on a term I used: information sherpa. I first used a similar term “video sherpa” in a post for a Carnival of Journalism about the future of online video. I wrote:

Perhaps a new form of journalistic curator will arise – the video sherpa, a journalist who guides others through the mazes of videos on various platforms like YouTube andVimeo to find the nuggets of related content that are worthwhile, a la Andy Carvin‘sNPR tweets about the Middle East.

I should specify that I’m using the term “sherpa” in a specific sense. Wikipedia captures that essence here:

Sherpas were immeasurably valuable to early explorers of the Himalayan region, serving as guides at the extreme altitudes of the peaks and passes in the region. Today, the term is used casually to refer to almost any guide or porter hired for mountaineering expeditions in the Himalayas. Sherpas are renowned in the international climbing and mountaineering community for their hardiness, expertise, and experience at high altitudes.

Another way of looking at our age instead of as “information overload” is to look at it as a mountain of information. News consumers who want to be informed, to stay on top of events that are important to them, need to find a way to scale that mountain. And they don’t always have the tools or experience to do so. That’s where a modern journalist can carve out an important role. The journalist as sherpa guides the info-mountaineer through the dizzying peaks and passes of the mountain of information, finding and presenting just the right information to help reach and stay on top of the mountain.

But I want to be clear about some things that are happening that are not what I mean by an information sherpa. The sherpa is not the mountaineer. The sherpa is not the mountain. The sherpa is not the treacherous weather that attacks the mountain suddenly. I’ll explain what I mean:

The sherpa is not the mountain: As I mentioned yesterday, there are too many sites on the internet that aren’t really providing high quality information. They’re posting intriguing photos and blurbs, or they’re posting barely disguised press releases, or hastily re-written information provided by quality news sources to juice page clicks. Those people are part of the mountain of information. They keep piling up the heights before the information consumer.

The sherpa is not the mountaineer: This is not the first time the sherpa has climbed the mountain. The sherpa knows a path through the mountain of B.S. masquerading as information, and is guiding the person who’s trying to make it up the mountain. More than ever, a journalist can’t be a generalist. Generalists get taken in by misinformation, slant, faux controversies and technical jargon meant to obscure rather than illuminate. A journalist needs to do everything possible to become fluent in whatever topic she is covering, learning who’s got an agenda, and when that agenda is shading the information she’s receiving. A sherpa doesn’t take the easiest path, but the best path.

The sherpa is not the weather: One of the most dangerous aspects of the ascent of Mt. Everest is the extreme and quickly changing weather, which can include high winds and sudden storms. In climbing a mountain of information, an info-mountaineer can experience frequent wild swings of information that can knock one off the path – useless information, sudden Twitter storms and Facebook outrages, breathless reporting about silly products and gossip about famous people. A true sherpa isn’t the weather. A journalist worth his salt doesn’t traffic in such chasing the weather. A sherpa stays the course, is aware of the weather, and knows to avoid its traps.

Many others have focused on the analogy of journalist as curator. But I think I prefer this analogy more. I would love to know what others think. I also think this new paradigm should influence how we train college journalists for the future.

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Curated links: Back to school edition

January 9, 2012 in Links

Hope everyone had a nice holiday break. Now, it’s time to get back to the spring semester. Here are some curated links to get the mind muscles going again:

The New Lazy Journalism – Seth Godin: “The hard part of professional journalism going forward is writing about what hasn’t been written about, directing attention where it hasn’t been, and saying something new.”

Linking out: Support your work and serve your readers – Bleacher Report: One of the most difficult tasks to get some reporters to perform is to add links to their stories before they go online.

What newsrooms should learn from Kodak – Steve Yelvington: “Businesses still need convey offers to consumers, and if anything, digital technology has chopped the audience up in to little pieces and distributed it all over the universe.Pulling audiences back together creates value. Make that your goal, and don’t let up for a second.”

Everything you need to know about buying a camera – The Verge: A really comprehensive report for anyone in the market for a new digital camera.

WeVideo: A cloud-based video editor that also works as a YouTube plug-in. 1GB of free storage, then there are premium plans.

It is not about whether the Washington Post is innovating too fast – Alfred Hermida: “The challenge for news organisations is taking a strategic approach to innovation. There is a risk of becoming enamoured with the latest shiny bit of technology or adopting a platform such as blogging without thinking through the why and how.”

Newspapers, Paywalls and Core Users – Clay Shirky: This is a lengthy read that explains some of the continuing push and pull in the newspaper industry regarding paywalls. Well worth the time to digest.

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Abandoning print at a community college: an adviser’s progress report

November 2, 2011 in College Media, management, Websites

Editor’s note: Mark Plenke wrote a message on the College Media Adviser’s Listserv about the transition to an online-only publication at Normandale CC. I invited him to revise and expand his comments and share them with readers who don’t have access to the listserv. This is the result. – Bryan

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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Red & Black takes innovative print/online strategy to new level

August 30, 2011 in College Media News, hope for the future, innovation

randb20The University of Georgia’s Red & Black (previously mentioned here and here and here) has long been an innovative campus media outlet. This semester, they’ve taken that innovation to a new level, abandoning their daily print product in favor of a weekly print/online hybrid and the addition of a monthly full-color magazine. You can see what the new weekly print edition looks like here. The R&B‘s web site is still powered by the WordPress CMS.

Dan Reimold outlines the strategy in a very complete article for PBS MediaShift: Revolution in Georgia: Student Newspaper Goes Digital First.

I interviewed Red & Black Publisher Harry Montevideo about some of the behind-the-scenes details of the development of this new publishing model.

I’m including a transcript of the entire interview below the fold, but I did want to mention a few of the top-level takeaways from the discussion:

  • The Red & Black spent a lot of time looking at the issue before deciding to go from daily to weekly.
  • The staff and board of directors spent a lot of time researching the issue before making a decision.
  • Students were understanding and accepting of the change – a key buy-in.
  • The staff interviewed advertisers and received assurances that the advertising income would be similar even in a weekly format.
  • The Red & Black hasn’t had to spend a lot of extra money on equipment to upgrade.
  • The student staff structure is pretty much the same as it was, with the exception of a few fewer page designers.
  • The new Ampersand magazine is an effort to pull in students who normally wouldn’t work for a newspaper, and provide another vehicle for advertising income.
  • The primary goal of the Red & Black is still training students for their future careers in journalism, no matter what format/publication schedule they have.

Here’s a look at the cover of the first issue of Ampersand:

magazineonline

The full version will be online at the Red & Black web site next week, says Ed Morales, editorial adviser. The magazine might get its own dedicated web site next year.

Read the rest of this entry →

Radio reporting with the iPhone

April 5, 2011 in ideas, Tech Talk

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Neil Augenstein has a good post up at the PBS MediaShift blog about using his iPhone 4 for radio reporting. It’s worth a read because Augenstein is producing professional radio news with his phone, and it works.

So is it worth it? A year in, iPhone-only reporting isn’t perfect. While audio editing works great, with the phone’s built-in microphone I’d estimate the sound quality of my field reports is 92% as good as when I use bulky broadcast equipment. Getting better audio for my video is a real challenge. And if I ever have to cover a story from a subway tunnel or location where there’s no WiFi or cell coverage, I won’t be able to file until I resurface.

As digital equipment continues to morph I’m sure my tools will be substantially different within a few years. Every day, new applications open new opportunities for a reporter who’s willing to work around the limitations of iPhone-only reporting while maximizing the benefits.

This semester, we’ve been looking at using smaller equipment in our multimedia reporting class precisely because of the miniaturization of the news gathering equipment. I’ll talk more about the changes we’re making soon.

Is anyone out there in college media using mobile phones or iPod Touches (for instance) for gathering news on a consistent basis?

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QR codes and college media

February 22, 2011 in hope for the future, ideas, innovation, Mobile

UPDATE: See end of post for additions – ed.

One of the topics that came up two weeks ago when I attended the Mid-America Press Institute’s “Managing in the Digital Age” workshop was QR codes.

For the uninitiated, QR codes are square “bar codes” that can be read by smart phones. You can embed information in a QR code that will allow the smart phone user to access a web page, or an e-mail address, or send a text, etc.

Monday, I was discussing the topic with an advanced digital media class and we thought about some ways college newspapers could use the codes.

An obvious way to use them is in advertising. But another great way to use them would be to place them in the editorial content to promote content in their online presence. Think about it: when you promote online content in the newspaper, usually you are asking the reader to set aside the paper and go to a computer, type in a Web address, and find the content. With a QR code, the reader can scan the code in the publication and be right at the relevant content immediately.

After the class, I sent an e-mail out to the CMA listserv to see who was using this technique and for what purposes.

Newspapers that have been using them include the N.C. State Technician (ads), Minnesota Daily (ads, per Logan Aimone at ACP), Texas Wesleyan’s Rambler (editorial), the Northern Illinois University Northern Star, and the College of Charleston student newspaper (per Mandi Bryson, assistant student media director).

Here’s a sample of how the Northern Star has used them (thanks to Jim Killam for the PDF):

qrcode

The biggest issues with using QR codes in the student news media (as I see them) are smart phone adoption, and conceptual understanding.

In one class I did a survey and 1 out of 14 students had a smart phone. On the other hand, smart phones are becoming more common across the U.S. population of cell phone users.

But many smart phone users don’t even know what those square blotches of ink are supposed to mean. If you do plan to do something with QR codes for smart phone users, you’re going to have to add some informational content to explain what those things are.

Three years ago when I first heard about QR codes, they seemed like an interesting, but slightly opaque, addition to the use of mobile phones and the Internet. Now, when I travel, I see them cropping up more and more, and the trend is likely to continue.

Are there other college media outlets using QR codes in their publications? If so, drop a comment in the comment section or e-mail me at scmurley -at- gmail.com and I’ll update this post.

And for those who are interested, here’s a list of QR code generators. One thing I would caution: when you generate a QR code, make sure you have a smart phone handy to make sure it works before you put it in the publication. Nothing will abuse people of the desire to check out your QR codes more than it not working when they use it the first time.

Update 1: Susan Kirkman Zake mentions that The Daily Kent Stater has been using a QR code in their flag for the last week to promote KentWired.com, with additional info on how to use it. Here’s a screencap from the PDF version:

kentstater

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Managing in the Digital Age

February 12, 2011 in management, social media, Training

I’m tweeting from the Mid-America Press Institute workshop “Managing in the Digital Age” today and tomorrow.

There’s going to be a lot of talk about social media, analytics, and mobile journalism, and a discussion about app development with folks from stltoday.

You can find details about the workshop here, and follow the tweets using the hashtag #mpinews

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Q&A: Rusty Lewis on CMN’s new business model

January 3, 2011 in College Media News, College Publisher, Content Management Systems, Media Companies - College Related

collegepublisherUPDATE: Additional questions appended after publication.

Editor’s note: These are the responses I received from College Media Network’s Rusty Lewis in response to questions I e-mailed him about their new business model/fee structure.

Since the announcement says that papers with an average of 25,000 page views/mo. will not be charged a fee, how many of your papers do you expect would be charged? What percentage of the total client list is that?

Approximately 100 CMN news sites are above the 25k threshold; this is about 20 percent of our network. We attempted to create several lower cost options for the publications with traffic below this mark, as we know many of them have limited resources.

When it comes to paying fees, there’s never a great time to implement such a change or make this sort of announcement. We understand many student publications use the spring and early summer to budget for the upcoming school year, so the start of the calendar year was as ideal as any time. This announcement allows CMN a full semester to explain and educate the market about the new options with enough time for publications to understand what they need to budget for in the coming school year.

What kind of feedback have you received since announcing the licensing fee?

While it feels like a sudden change, many of the publications or individuals we have reached out to expressed that this change makes sense In an industry full of semester- and year-based turnover, CMN’s success is largely due to the continuity our staff and services provide college media. We wanted to remain in existence, and so far our partners understand that desire.

That said, we have received a some very positive feedback in our efforts to provide multiple options/packages.

Today is actually the second wave of social activity. A CP partner tweeted the initial post within 12 hours of posting it to our site, and we saw an initial buzz for a few hours after that. Overall, though, a surprising amount of the conversation we’ve seen has taken place between people beyond the college media circuit.

Why the difference between the standard CMN/College Publisher package ($1995/yr) and the WordPress package ($4500/yr)?

College Publisher software relies on already existent infrastructure designed to share resources and provide streamlined support. This allows us to spread costs across the entire network. Our WP option is an individualized installation enabling the newspaper staff to customize their site (through themes and plug-ins) in ways network-based software can’t do as easily.

Will you charge $150/hour to support WordPress, and what sort of support is offered in the yearly plan?

The $4,500 annual license fee covers support related to CMN services related to server environment operation, DNS services and integration of CMN plug-ins. Many of the CMN plug-ins –advertising system, traffic reporting, city guide publisher, e-mail newsletter – power the core functions for a news site.

This support package does not include CMN digging into the custom code web editors write. If the site is experiencing failures, we will make sure that CMN plug-ins are not causing the error and then roll back to previous versions in order to isolate what is wrong.

CMN will be responsible for deploying WP core updates, which can be frequent, but are essential to assuring security and stability of the site. Compatibility development post-update for themes and plug-ins (non-CMN plug-ins) is solely the responsibility of the newspaper.

Any supplemental charges for support (at $150/hr) would be discussed and approved in writing in advance of any work being done. These charges would be limited to requests for review of custom code, design work or staff training.

Is there a cost associated with moving to WordPress on the CMN network? (i.e., from CP5 to WP on your system)

Data migration projects can vary from publication to publication so we are not setting a policy on costs for archives. CMN will tackle these requests on a case-by-case basis.

Will you assist in the site design for WordPress as a part of the yearly fee?

No. Our design services are available for our core platform, CP5.

What would be the advantage to having CPPro? ($8995/yr)

This system has dedicated resources (from a hardware, software and personnel standpoint.) A publication choosing this option can expect a high level of customization for any convergence type of project or newsroom work-flow situation. All customization would be unique to this instance (as opposed to CP5) and tailored to the specific needs of the news organization(s) on an ongoing basis.

Why was this announced Dec. 20, when most college media are on holiday break?

It was really simply an unfortunate byproduct of the way the calendar fell with regard to the new ownership of CMN. It took almost three months to fix, assess, plan and announce. The Access Network Co. felt it was the most responsible thing to announce plans for the CMN business as soon as they were finalized (as we would look to start implementing these changes early in 2011.)

The posting of this policy change on our site served as a reference point. In contacting our partners via phone and e-mail, we have somewhere to refer folks to dig into the details. When considering the alternative – “sitting” on the story until the New Year – we hope the news hounds out there understand the decision to post the information as soon as it was ready.

Beyond the business model, what is the overall vision here?

CMN is a collection of niche sites serving the college community. When we started, there was a great need for getting online quickly. We filled that need the best we could. In the previous decade, needs changed and spread to reflect the diversity that exists in college media.

This change is long overdue. College media is unique in that all of our partners serve the same purpose in their local markets, but they do it in a variety of ways. We needed to offer options and customization.

In order to provide college media with more services and more distribution channels, we needed to make tweaks to the business that allowed for client customization. Now, college newspapers can be a member of CMN and use one or all of our products.

This major change in our business model was always an internal discussion point, but only until the most recent change in ownership has the capability from an accounting perspective existed to make this adjustment possible. The Access Network Co. is a technology provider to publishers and brands – they have the infrastructure to help CMN navigate this change.

Innovation is essential to college media’s survival, and ultimately ours, too.

Our goal is allowing students and faculty to focus on storytelling and information dissemination. This doesn’t have to exclude the handful of students who have a passion for custom development. While this is a growing number of students, it’s not nearly a critical mass. We are looking to create an ecosystem that allows publications to experiment with that minority of student developers and easily transition to something else when those students move on.

Anything else you’d like to add that I haven’t asked about?

All of the prices and packages came from competitive analysis of various providers to the college market. When it came to pricing CP5 and CP Pro, we really took a look at the costs we are incurring to support and develop these systems to determine the price tag. We need to cover costs.

Our focus in 2011 is generating revenue, not just for us, but for our partners. The Access Network Co. is looking to create new revenue programs and hopefully get more digital advertising dollars to college media.

We thrive on feedback and sincerely want partners to let us know if they have any concerns or questions about this model change, our services or anything else related to our goals for 2011.

——— ADDITIONAL Q&A ———–

When did CMN begin looking at charging for the product?

This has been an idea kicked around for years going back to Y2M days. The issue was we never really had the infrastructure to execute this type of business model and client tracking. Investment was put off at several points in the past for a variety of reasons, but the economy definitely made our budgets lean (at least in recent history.)

How soon will this begin affecting existing customers?

We are contacting some newspapers now.

As stated in our communications, we are honoring all existing contracts. Our process involves giving 90 days advance notice to our partners that we are not renewing the existing agreements under the current terms. We have only just begun the process, but under the new set of options, we feel that newspapers will be getting more than they were under our older agreements.

How do you plan to get the word out to your partner news outlets?

We are using all the means at our disposal.

Collegepublisher.com is the hub of info newspapers can use for research and information gathering. We are beginning outreach via email and phone this week and will continue to do this all through the semester, prioritizing newspapers by the renewal date of their contract.

We definitely appreciate CICM for covering the story as it helps clear up any confusion. However, if a newspaper has any questions, we are available through email (support@collegepublisher.com) , phone (866.733.9231) and twitter (@collegepublish).