College OTR enters college media fray

Here's another alternative to traditional college media: College OTR (On the Record).

OTR describes itself as "a new network of campus-specific blogs, written by students, for students, making sure that whatever happens on campus goes 'On The Record.' Think of us as your campus paper on crack -- quicker, funnier, and better-looking (even though we may be missing a few teeth)."

To date OTR includes bloggers from Boston U., Claremont, Cornell, GWU, Harvard, James Madison U, Northwestern, NYU, Penn State, Purdue, Stanford, Syracuse, Tufts, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Wesleyan, Yale and the universities of California (Berkeley and San Diego) Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri (Columbia), North Carolina (Chapel Hill), Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (Madison). The site, which is still in Beta mode, is planning to officially launch this fall.

Each school has its own home page like this:



The site is actively recruiting (according to CollegeWebEditor.com, student bloggers are paid $500 per semester).

Because it's not regional, I don't see this as a threat to college newspapers in the way BigLickU, SwoCol.com and The Loop are. It's hard to imagine these folks stealing our advertisers or even our readers in any serious way.

And from what I've seen of the content so far, I don't think we have to worry about our best and brightest staffers fleeing our newspapers to go work for College OTR. This site seems to specialize in unsubstantiated rumor, writing without reporting, goofy photo illustrations and not only anonymous sources but anonymous reporters.

Some examples:
* GWU: More Good Places for Hooking Up, Now with a Sexy Risk of Getting Caught

* University of Florida: Your boyfriend sucks... And apparently your best friend does too

Still, College OTR could beat campus newspapers to the punch on stories.

It's something for college media folks to keep our eye on--if only for lessons in what not to do.

What do YOU think of College OTR? Post a comment!

Another invasion on college media turf

Watch out, student newspapers. Here's another effort by a professional news organization to reach out to college students--and steal your readers. This one is called The Loop and it's aimed at college students in the Rochester, New York area.

The Loop is a partnership of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and seven area colleges: the State University of New York schools at Brockport and Geneseo, St. John Fisher College, Nazareth College, Roberts Wesleyan College, Rochester Institute of Technology and Monroe Community College. There are plans to expand to others.

The Rochester area has 80,000 college students attending 19 schools, according to The Loop.

The site, which formally debuts today on the Web, is largely staffed by students at those colleges. It will include blogs, news articles, galleries, a calendar, online forums and other features.

It's similar to BigLickU in the Roanoke, Virginia area and Swocol in Ohio.

We'd love to hear from The Lamron at SUNY Geneseo, The Stylus at SUNY Brockport, The Cardinal Courier at St. John Fisher College, The Monroe Doctrine (great name!) at Monroe Community College, The Gleaner at Nazareth College, The Beacon at Roberts Wesleyan College, The Campus Times at the University of Rochester and other college newspapers in the area.

How do you feel about this new site? Are you collaborating with it? Are you worried about losing readers to The Loop? What are you doing to compete? Post a comment here or send an e-mail message to collegenewspaper@gmail.com.

You can read more about The Democrat and Chronicle's plans for The Loop here.

My previous post about Swocol.com is here.