The Heights is NOT The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The Heights student newspaper at Boston College wants you to know: It is not descending into that great unpublished yonder that is journalistic oblivion.  In its own words, via an editorial published recently, “The Heights isn’t following the fate of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer just yet.”  Take that Newspaper Death Watch!  (Umm, at least for now…)

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In the editorial, the paper offers one of those funny this just in … no news here announcements.  It reminds me of the press conferences that general managers in the sports world call to ensure the public that a coach’s job is safe (ironic of course because in the end a statement of confidence in something is typically only made when confidence in something is lacking).

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However, the editorial did win me over with two specific confidence motions:

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1) “The Heights survived the Great Depression – in fact, its advertising sales increased during the early ’30s – and it will survive the present crisis in the print news industry.”

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2) “The Heights‘ raison d’être is the service it provides to this campus, and we promise to do whatever necessary to preserve that. There is something irreplaceable about paging through a newspaper in the morning and something unmatchable about the quality that Stanford University Professor Theodore Glasser claims only the “sustained, systematic coverage that a good newsroom” can generate. A newspaper provides a standard of integrity and ethical journalism that the blogosphere has yet to attain. Furthermore, only a campus newspaper with allegiance only to itself can promise to unapologetically expose truth on the university level.”

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College Media Online Journalism Contest 2.0: “Rock on!”

The CICM College Media Online Journalism Contest, which bills itself as “the most comprehensive student media online journalism contest evah,” is back.  The contest is international in scope.  Its aim: to feature the best in online and multimedia reporting, presentation, and innovation in collegemediatopia.

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Contest version 2.0 is now accepting standout student journalism work in 22, let’s be honest, kick-ass categories.  The two newbies: multimedia journalist of the year and webmaster of the year.  In the words of CICM director Bryan Murley, “Rock on!”

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The fee: $30 per student media outlet.  The deadline: May 15.

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Hate Speech, Rubber Bands, and the Student Newspaper

Truly disturbing.  A Detroit-based neo-Nazi group spread its anti-everything message recently by rubber-banding fliers around The Daily Chronicle student newspaper at the University of Utah (an image of one of the banded papers is below).  As a Salt Lake City ABC news affiliate reported: “Some [readers] got a flier condemning ‘interracial marriage’ and others got one entitled, ‘Take back America from the Jews.'”

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The basic plot: Chronicle issues were stolen.  The fliers were wrapped around them.  And then the rubber-banded stack was delivered one by one to the doorsteps of some Salt Lake City residents.

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Chronicle editors have publicly condemned the act and ensured readers the paper was not involved in the theft, fliers, or hateful deliveries.  Truly disturbing- and interesting that even hate groups still respect the power of the print press in spreading their messages.

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Student Newspaper Adviser’s Tenure Denied: Response to Unfavorable Coverage?

If the related reports have any merit, the Board of Trustees at Clark College in Washington state should be ashamed with itself.  According to The Chronicle of Higher Education (and others), the board has engaged in the one of the worst kinds of indirect student press censorship: denying tenure to a professor who leads the student newspaper.  Why the denial?  Reports indicate it may be because under her tenure the paper has amped up its coverage of the school administration.

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According to the Chronicle: “[T]he journalism professor, Christina Kopinski, fought the administration’s desire to prescreen articles before they were published and advocated a more aggressive brand of journalism when she took over as faculty adviser to The Independent, in 2006. The newspaper subsequently published a number of articles criticizing campus security and certain administrative decisions.”

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The board swears the process was handled properly- so properly that it flew in the face of a unanimous tenure approval by the school’s faculty committee and a feeling that her tenure process would be routine.  Hmmmm.  I smell foul play. One faculty member: “[I]s there a subliminal message with it? Are [Clark’s leaders] trying to exert some influence on people, ‘Be careful.'”

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To the Clark board: Own up to your failings.  Respect the student newspaper’s role in occasionally pointing them out.  And don’t punish someone for doing her job (and doing it well!).

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Exclusive: Palestra.net CEO Discusses UWIRE Purchase

In what amounts to a hugely positive shake-up in student press circles, Palestra.net has purchased UWIRE, the richest content provider in collegemediatopia, the Center for Innovation in College Media announced earlier today.

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Billing itself as “an online home for everything college students care about,” Palestra.net “has been operating outside the traditional college media sphere” since its launch in 2006, according to CICM director Bryan Murley.

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With the UWIRE purchase, however, it is official: Palestra is now on the inside.

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Joe Weasel, Palestra.net Co-founder and CEO, is a former Ohio State University journalism professor and Scripps Howard News Service syndicated columnist with years of broadcast reporting experience.  (Second on the “Bios” list.)  He graciously spoke to me just now about the transaction, which he said has been in the works since Thanksgiving ’08:

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What is the goal for Palestra in picking up UWIRE?

We’re trying to position the company, which is now UWIRE, that’s what we’ll go by is UWIRE, we’re trying to find an outlet and find the mechanism whereby students can get even more engaged in not only print and text but digital journalism.  We’re trying to get students as much exposure as possible to the outlets that combine both UWIRE and Palestra and in essence keep building the college network.  UWIRE is a good fit for Palestra because it’s such a foundation for journalism students. Even though we’re changing platforms and technology changes and consumption changes, we still pretty much believe the foundation is still going to be a solid writer.  That’s not going to change.  This kind of brings that into play for us.

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What changes will student editors or the sites’ visitors notice?

You are going to see the UWIRE site maybe improved a little bit.  For the most part, the mechanics of how UWIRE works will remain.  You know, Ben French did a tremendous job of setting that company up and getting it into the position of where it is and it would be foolish to change that.  The differences you’ll see, we’re going to launch a number of education intitiatives in the fall of ’09.  We’re going to try to increase our presence with some of the college organizations and try to become as much of a partner as possible with schools.  We also have some plans that hopefully will help drive traffic to the student newspaper sites because UWIRE isn’t UWIRE without a strong newspaper network.  So we have to continue to build upon that, like I said, the things that Ben laid the foundation for.

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This must be a personally exciting time for you, as Palestra Co-founder.

While it’s a very scary time for journalism, I’m hoping that this is the time to kind of bring all the different media together and find out where some of the dust settles.  I really want to see students get opportunities.  As a professor, it was always frustrating that it seemed like the students I had, the best ones, were schlepping around delivering pizzas so they could stay in school.  That was really why I started Palestra, to try to find paid internships, not to compete or not to replace TV stations or school papers but to try to find a branch to get them into the profession the best I could and I think this helps enhance it even more.

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Any teasers on the education initiatives you mentioned?

We have the UWIRE 100, which is a phenomenal place to start to see where some of the best [j-students] are that will come out into the workplace.  We want to take that model and do some specific initiatives that get students exposed and to get them direct links into a number of media, using both text and video to be able to have access to networks and get exposure they maybe normally wouldn’t have.

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This Just In: Emerald, Publishing Board Reach Agreement

After a much-publicized strike and the resignation of its publishing board head, The Emerald student newspaper and its supervisory board have reached a mediated agreement on the paper’s immediate future.  The basics of the statement, as outlined by the Emerald (sent to CMM and other blogs/media outlets by editor Ashley Chase):

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1) A publisher will be hired after a national search.

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2) The publisher’s duties will be strictly business-related (i.e. keeping the paper in the black).

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3) The Emerald‘s student leadership will retain editorial control of the paper at all times.

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4) The publisher will not teach courses in the Oregon University j-school, to avoid any potential conflicts of interest.

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5) Future bylaws will dictate the board and student staff must smile at each other much more often.  Hugs optional.  :-)

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Non-Prude Parent “Disgusted” by Student Sex Column

A father of a prospective student at the University of West Florida who considers himself “no shrinking violet and certainly not a prude” wrote a letter of moral outrage late last week about a sex column in The Voyager student newspaper penned by “Pixie Gonzalez.”

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It is one the funnier anti-sex-in-the-student-press missives I have ever come across.  The man, a father of three who stumbled upon the column in a campus cafeteria after taking his high school senior son on a school tour, started the letter by assuring that he has not written anything like this in the past: “I DON’T DO THIS! But I was so shocked and disgusted by what your newspaper chose to publish.”

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As he went on to note:

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What possible editorial and journalistic motive was there for printing such trash- was this opinion piece meant to elevate the discussion on sex, excess drinking, drug use or STD’s on college campuses? . . . We also learn from this enlightened young lady that having “lady parts” will not make a girl psycho if you have good old casual sex and that we, as men, need to “loosen up a bit … and give vagina’s a chance.” Girls at UWF want what Pixie wants- “a belly full of beer, a taquito from Whataburger and an orgasm.” UNBELIEVABLE!!! . . . My 18 year old obviously was shocked but more concerned that his mother and I would never allow him to attend a University that would publish such trash.

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Oh, dearest proudly non-prude parent, please understand five things:

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1) The student newspaper is editorially independent.  Call it UNBELIEVABLE.  Call it trash.  But keep the blame to the paper, not the school.  The only thing to which the school is guilty is upholding students’ free press/free speech rights.

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2) It is called sarcasm, satire, even a dash of sensationalism.  Google them now.  Then go back to shrinking violets.

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3) Read campus newspapers all you want.  Learn from them.  React to them.  But remember, they are not published for you.

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4) In the end, it is all about perspective.  You dislike Pixie.  By contrast, a comment underneath one of Pixie’s recent columns online: “Pithy, honest, and hilarious. Everything I want in a column like this!”

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5) Finally, a non-prude alert!  Many student newspapers at U.S. and Canadian universities have sex columns.  So be careful flipping through the paper on your next campus tour. :-)

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Student Papers in State of Absolute Topsy-Turvydom

If you still needed any confirmation that collegemediatopia is imploding/reinventing without any real sense of what the heck is going on, read this piece on The Daily Californian written in-house by UC-Berkeley News.

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Basically an interview with the current top editor (wrapped around the usual chest-beating over j-awards earned), the chatter seems to come to three paradoxical conclusions: 1) Economy is down, reader interest is up.  2) We will change everything about ourselves to survive.  3) For the time being, and possibly well into the future, student journalism is going to have to accept doing more with even less (pay, staff, resources) than usual.

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DOWN BUT UP: In the piece, Daily Cal editor-in-chief Bryan Thomas discusses the loss of Wednesday’s print edition, the slashing of pay for most staffers, and the paper’s uncertain economic future (the cliche “skating on the brink of financial disaster” literally appears in the lead sentence).  Yet, he says readership, in print AND online, is up.

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ANYTHING TO SURVIVE: An endowment funding model is being passionately pursued.  A continuous online news cycle is being honed.  Even an attempt to expand the paper’s coverage area and “establish itself as the paper of record for the city of Berkeley” is being put into action (a move that Daily Cal editors from ten years ago told me is anathema to everything the paper once strove to be, at least during their tenure).

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BIGGER QUESTIONS: Thomas ends appropriately not with answers, but questions: “What is our mission? How can we keep people interested? How do we need to reshape ourselves for the future of journalism?”

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Stay tuned for answers . . .

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Student Media Fee Cuts Would Leave KU Outlets Limping

The student media have long been viewed as the beating hearts of higher education, pulsing at the center of nearly every first-rate university worldwide.  At the University of Kansas, trouble is brewing at this heart, in the form of a possible reduction or elimination of student media fees- fees that support the operating budgets and lifebloods of a number of student press outlets.

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Among organizations and outlets that would be affected, either literally left for dead or just permanently “able to limp along” without funding from the fees: The Daily Kansan, KJHK campus radio (30,000 Lawrence-area listeners), a filmworks group, and a student literary magazine.

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An editorial in The Kansan expresses understanding for the current bleak-ified economic outlook, but implores the student senate to reconsider:

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[S]lashing the student media fee is a misguided solution that will result in fewer services from student media organizations, possible student job losses and a long-term reduction in student hiring by the organizations that receive money from the fee. . . [It would] also greatly damage the ability to provide news coverage to the student body as a whole.

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Student Paper Files Police Report About Theft … By Police

Drug trafficking and newspaper theft sadly aligned at MIT earlier this week when 400 copies of The Tech student newspaper (one of the oldest in the country) were found dumped in two separate recycling bins on campus.  The kicker, as The Tech later reported: The issues were ‘recycled’ by campus police who were either protesting or protecting one of their own.

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The issue in question featured a front page story on the arrest of a fellow campus police officer for trafficking prescription painkillers (see screenshot of front page above).

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The one bit of happy news for collegemediatopia in all this: Campus officials are appearing to take the crime uber-seriously, placing the officers on unpaid administrative leave and conducting a full investigation (literally with photos and interviews).  The campus police chief: “I can’t emphasize how seriously we take this [the newspaper trashing].  This was incredibly egregious.”

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Singapore Friend to Me: “What is this March Madness?”

To me, the third month of the year has always been two words long.  There is simply no March without Madness.  Growing up, college basketball’s holy grail was family bonding, an introduction to sports gambling, a testosterone release, and a pleasurable diversion from homework, chores, and vice-versa.  (It is apparently cathartic for the nation as well, according to The New York Times.)  I remember the Christian Laettner shot more vividly than some past relationships.  (Be honest, there are readers out there who know what I’m talking about.)

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Yet, I have now learned there are parts of the world that are not aware of this great American tradition or even consider it an oddity, like winter snow and $20 bills and steering wheels on the left.  At dinner earlier this evening, a friend remarked that my latest Facebook status update about enjoying March Madness confused her: “I figured it must be a sporting event of some kind because you mentioned you hoped there’d be upsets.  But why are you so excited?  What is this March Madness?”

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My shooting hand hit the dinner table with a thud.  I tried to explain its significance, dropping in buzzwords like Sweet Sixteen and Coach K and single elimination and George Mason and Obama’s ballot.  She remained impassive, changing the subject to AIG.

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I cried a little inside at that moment (in a manly way) mainly because it has never been easier to be a U.S. college basketball fan.  In another example of what I am calling the year of the video (see previous post about live-streaming of  Obama inauguration), the words college and media have come together impeccably well in the form of “March Madness on Demand.”

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MMOD offers live-streamed video of every game in the tournament, available even to temporary expats like me who are watching online until the sun rises over Southeast Asia.  Yes, it was offered last year, but this year’s version is much higher quality- more options, quicker buffering, less kinks, and easier navigation.  I can only hope my (former) friend reads this post. :-)

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5 Days Left to Nominate All-Star J-Students for UWIRE 100

Please note: The final extended deadline for the esteemed UWIRE 100 student journalist honor is March 25th.  The UWIRE 100 is an annual talent pool of the top j-students worldwide.

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According to UWIRE, those who fit the bill include j-students whose names serve as the answers to the following questions: “Know a reporter who scoops the national press? A copy editor who catches the most obscure grammar errors? A designer whose images leap off of the pages? A blogger who is pushing industry boundaries? Or a broadcaster who never misses a line?”

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It is the closest thing collegemediatopia has to an all-star team.  I have nominated a few j-students whom I think are especially worthy.  Be sure to join in the fun and nominate someone you admire journalistically ASAP.  You can even nominate yourself (you self-centered j-student you). :-)

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Professor: Why Teach Journalism If Newspapers Are Dying?

An anonymous journalism professor wrote in to an advice guru of some kind at Salon two days back warbling about her guilt at teaching college journalism students when print newspapers, the foundation of the field’s industry work, are imploding.

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According to the j-prof:

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The problem is this: I feel like I’m teaching them something that will be as useful as Sanskrit when they graduate. I am trying to get them involved in learning the latest technology as well as teaching them important writing and life skills, so they will be employable. But every morning I read stories about how huge, venerable newspapers will likely be shuttered by the end of the year, and it absolutely freaks me out. What the heck am I doing? I feel like I’m a participant in the theater of the absurd.

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In some respects, I absolutely understand her frustration.  All of us educators (or at least the ones who still care) are trying our darnedest to keep up with the un-keep-up-able new tech trends and rolling out killer apps in class lessons and bandying about phrases like Journalism 6.0 without any grander sense of where this whole shebang is heading.  (And anyone not named Jay Rosen who does tell you he or she knows where this all is heading is lying.)

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But we are also involved in a higher calling than any media shift or economic spiral can destroy.  Journalism, even in the online/citizen/bloggerific age in which we are ensconced, is not smoke and mirrors.  It is also not just a profession.  It is a philosophy. It’s a way of looking at the world, digging beneath parts of it, and bringing certain facets of it to life.

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Newspapers may die, or at least reinvent, but the tenets of quality reporting and editing will not cease to be incredibly useful for students of the craft. I will always consider myself lucky to teach j-students a bit about that. Worrying about students finding a job is not a j-professor’s role. University j-programs are not built as farm systems for the professional press. My goodness, how boring and factory-like that would make our classes. The best j-programs and classes teach skills but also the art of dissection: What is the best of journalism, and the worst? What can we learn from the past and present? What shape should the future of the field take?  And most important, in respect to journalism and the ways of the world, what does it all mean???

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And if you’re afraid you’re teaching them something as useful as Sanskrit, maybe it’s time you worked WITH them to create something new, something better, something more useful. Too many j-educators think they need to talk AT j-students (speaking of theater of the absurd…). The best j-students are not just the future of journalism. They are its present.  Don’t be surprised if they teach you a few things.  And don’t feel guilty about that!  The best teachers should always be open to learning along the way.

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Obama Cartoon Leads to Student Press Oversight Battle

The Chronicle student newspaper at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona published a syndicated editorial cartoon last month displaying an image of Obama that some outside readers felt was “too monkey-like.”  The result: A controversy over control of the publication that continues to brew more than a month after the cartoon ran.

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The cartoon first appeared in The Scranton Times-Tribune.

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The cartoon depicts Obama standing on a molehill labeled “Presidency” staring up at a much-larger mountain of expectations.  Is his appearance racially insensitive or downright derogatory? The Chronicle editorial team says the answer displays a generational divide, noting that complaints have come exclusively from non-student community members who editors believe are hypersensitive toward a bevy of perceived racial slights that younger adults have not lived through.

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The worst part, according to the college’s journalism director: Most of the complainants did not even see the original cartoon, instead reading about its publication in a meant-to-cause-trouble mass e-mail that inferred the paper had run the infamous New York Post “Chimp Cartoon” instead of the one pictured above.  As the j-director wrote, “It’s amazing what one person with a districtwide email system and the wrong cartoon can do to damage the press.”

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And while accounts differ on exactly what went down next (read 1 and then read 2), it does seem clear that at a subsequent meeting of the governing board overseeing local community colleges, certain board members expressed an interest in overseeing (and possibly “controlling”) future student press content created within affiliated schools.  In one board member’s words: “The School papers are paid for by the tax payers and therefore the tax payer, the people of Maricopa are the owners of the paper. The people’s college paper has an elected Board. We, the Board, answer to our funding source.”

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My take: Give me a break.  Proper oversight is vital for any student press outlet certainly, but this high-and-mighty we must answer to the people schtick is as bogus as people complaining about a cartoon they have never even seen.  This is NOT about doing what’s best for the people of Maricopa.  This is about the local powers-that-be attempting to enact a reactive policy based on a scurrilous set of complaints.  To the board: Let the student press publish in peace, learn from its mistakes (real or perceived), and be led by competent people hired under your authority who know how to carry out quality journalism and weather storms of all sizes, mountains and molehills.

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Student Journalists’ Rewards: Salaried, Credited or Clipped?

What should students *earn* for being journalists while still in school?  Money?  Course credit?  Extra-curricular activity points?  Or just clips, good-ol’ experience, and a résumé boost?

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It is a loaded question and one of the few that really cuts to the heart of collegemediatopia’s purpose, brought up most recently by a University of Oregon j-student in the wake of the Emerald student newspaper strike.  In respect to the paper’s purported financial concerns, the student wrote a letter to the editor in which she wondered why some of the Emerald‘s student staffers should earn money for their work, especially given the pub’s poor economic state and the many students willing to write for free.

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In her words: “The current reporters are doing a fine job, but if they don’t find portfolio-worthy clips to be adequate payment for the invaluable experience they’re gaining as a member of the staff, I encourage them to consider another line of work.”

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As I’ve written before, when done right and with full enthusiasm, running or writing for a student newspaper, big or small, daily or weekly, is a full-time job.  The reality is that determining just rewards for such work is *incredibly* complicated and dependent on a number of factors- the news outlet’s budget, its level of independence, and its oversight (i.e. who is empowered to make the salary/stipend decisions?).

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This issue also rides the third rail of collegemediatopia, directly atop the haves and have nots divide.  The truth is that a lot of j-students do a lot of great work at a lot of college media outlets, and only a small percentage actually get paid for their work.  The notion of student reporters being paid at the weekly paper I helped run during my undergrad days at a small liberal arts college would have created laughter loud enough to echo off the walls of the campus chapel annex that had been converted into our newsroom.

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In respect to the Emerald and other biggie student pubs suffering economic woes: Is the letter writer right?  Is it irresponsible to complain about financial problems while the editorial team receives a salary that a lot of j-students do not get for doing the same thing?  And bigger picture: Should portfolio-worthy clips or experience you can tout in a job interview be payment enough for a j-student’s hard work?  Or as a student said to me recently, “Isn’t the bling in the byline?”

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