A lousy week for journalists -- and j-students

KANSAS CITY - What a week to be at the ACP/CMA National College Media Convention! Here I am with all these eager young college students, many of whom harbor dreams of entering the field of journalism in the next year or two, and there’s nothing but carnage in the industry.

As David Carr writes in The New York Times this morning, “It’s been an especially rotten few days for people who type on deadline."

Just consider:

• The Christian Science Monitor announced Tuesday it would cease publication of its weekday print edition.
  
• On the same day Time Inc., publisher of Time magazine, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated, announced it was cutting 600 jobs and reorganizing its staff.
  
• Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, revealed plans to lay off 10 percent of its work force, as many as 3,000 people.
  
• On Monday, the Tribune Company announced it was cutting 75 more jobs from the newsroom of The Los Angeles Times, leaving it approximately half the size it was at the turn of this century.
  
• And The Star-Ledger of Newark, the 15th-largest paper in the country, declared plans to reduce its editorial staff by 40 percent.
  

All this came amid news that the nation's daily newspapers saw circulation decline more steeply than anticipated. On Monday the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported that average weekday circulation was 38,165,848 at 507 of the nation's leading dailies in the six months ending in September, a 4.6 percent decline from 40,022,356 a year earlier. Up till then, advertising revenue had risen quarter after quarter.

Here at the Marriott in downtown KC, where nearly 1,800 students and advisers involved in college media are gathered for five days of workshops and panel discussions, we urge students to develop new skills. We encourage them to "think multimedia," we teach them how to create interactive maps, audio slide shows and video reports for the Web so that they'll be able to do things that 25-year veteran reporters and photographers can't. We tell them they need to be flexible, creative and skilled in many areas to survive and thrive.

But even with such new media skills, where are they going to get jobs? News Web sites are struggling too. And online publications do not appear to be the savior of their print counterparts.

As Carr notes in his column, "More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry’s revenue still derives from the print product, a legacy technology that attracts fewer consumers and advertisers every single day."

Two weeks ago, the Times and other news media reported that online revenue at newspaper sites was stalling. In the second quarter, it was down 2.4 percent compared with last year, to $777 million, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

The impact here in Kansas City is palpable. Only three media companies sent recruiters to the convention, down from about 14 in previous years. Why should they meet with potential employees when they have no jobs to fill?

And still we talk here about the power of "capital-J" journalism. We encourage our students to seek out the truth, to expose wrongs, to, as the old saying goes, "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

What will students here be thinking as they head home Saturday and Sunday after sitting through session after session and speech after speech? Will they mull over the words of inspiration and the heartfelt advice from media professionals and journalism educators? Will they pledge to develop new skills and embrace new media?

Or will they simply think about changing majors. Maybe philosophy isn't so impractical after all. At least opportunities for philosophers aren't evaporating before their eyes.

Colorado State rejects Gannett proposal

A proposed deal between Colorado State University's student-run, nonprofit Rocky Mountain Collegian and the Gannett-owned Fort Collins Coloradoan is off, according to news reports.

"We had one conversation with the university out there," Gannett spokeswoman Tara Connell told the Daily Free Press, the student newspaper at Boston University. "They said it's not for us, the paper isn't for sale. End of story."

In January, Colorado State University President Larry Penley sent an e-mail to the campus community confirming rumors that university officials had met with the editor and publisher of The Coloradoan, the local Gannett paper, to discuss a possible partnership. Read more about it in this earlier post.

You can read The Rocky Mountain Collegian's coverage of campus discussions on the future of student media at the university here.

Gannett eyes yet another student newspaper

The publisher and editor of The Coloradoan, a Gannett paper in Fort Collins, Colo., met Tuesday with Colorado State University officials to discuss a "strategic partnership" to run the student newspaper, according to a report by the Associated Press.

The news comes just five months after The Rocky Mountain Collegian made national headlines for running an editorial that said "Taser This.... Fuck Bush." Editor-in-Chief J. David McSwane was reprimanded but not fired for his actions.

"This is not happening in a vacuum," Mike Hiestand, an attorney for the Student Press Law Center told The Rocky Mountain Collegian. "This is happening after a very public, pretty nasty fight" between university officials and McSwane.

McSwane asked to attend the meeting between university and Coloradoan officials, but he and Collegian reporters were denied access, according to the Collegian article.

Gannett already owns two student newspapers, FSView & Florida Flambeau, the twice-weekly student paper serving Florida State University, and Central Florida Future at the University of Central Florida. (See articles on the 2006 sale of FSView & Florida Flambeau in The New York Times and InsideHigherEd.com.)

The listserv of College Media Advisers, a national organization a campus newspaper advisers and business managers, was abuzz with news of the Gannett-Colorado State University meeting.

"This takes privatization in a whole new direction and threatens the very core of student press freedom on that campus," wrote Kathy Lawrence, director of student media at the University of Texas-Austin, and a former CMA president. "Everyone who cares about an independent student press needs to sound the alarm loudly."

The news of Gannett's interest in The Rocky Mountain Collegian comes at a time when many professional newspaper publishers are looking for ways to attract a younger readership. Some are trying to lure college students with special regional Web sites aimed at college students like The Loop in Rochester, NY, SwoCol in Southwestern Ohio and BigLickU in Roanoke, Virginia.

More competition for college newspapers

News Flash:
Cox Ohio Publishing is launching a Web site for students at the region's college campuses, according to the Springfield News-Sun.

"We talked to hundreds of students and found out that there's no single place to find what's happening on and around campus," Katie Wedell, content producer for Swocol.com, told the Springfield, Ohio newspaper. The Web site is targeting students at the University of Dayton, Wright State University, Sinclair Community College and Miami University in Oxford.

But what does this mean for The Flyer News at the University of Dayton, The Guardian at Wright State University, The Clarion at Sinclair Community College and The Miami Student at Miami University in Oxford?

Competition.

Will Miami University students spend as much time reading The Miami Student when they've got another site to get youth-oriented news and information about the area? Will advertisers be as likely to buy ads in the individual college papers when they have a Web site targeting students at all four colleges in the region?

This comes just one year after Gannett bought the FSView and Florida Flambeau at Florida State University and MTV bought College Publisher.

Faced with declining readership and plummeting profits, professional media organizations are trying to invade our turf. Are we in college media going to stand by and let this happen? What's next? Is The New York Times going to buy the Washington Square News? Is The Boston Glove going to try to lure readers away from The Harvard Crimson?

Student newspapers are facing a kind of competition we've never seen before. To survive and thrive, we've got to produce publications that are more engaging, savvier, hipper, more in touch with our readers than we've ever been.

If I were at one of the college newspapers in the area, I'd beef up my Web site, boost coverage of local entertainment and write more service articles that help students navigate college life. On top of that, I'd try to strengthen local campus coverage. I'd start the semester with a pep talk to the staff, saying the competition is on.

We've got to show those professionals who's boss.

What advice do you have for the Ohio college newspapers? Post a comment.

For more about this topic read:
"College Papers Deliver," The Baltimore Sun

"Big Media on Campus," The Wall Street Journal