The Next Newsroom Project completes plan

Chris O'Brien of The Next Newsroom Project reports that the board of The Chronicle, the independent, student-run newspaper at Duke University, has adopted the project's proposal for a new newsroom.

The plan is available here.

O'Brien, a business reporter at the San Jose Mercury News and Duke Chronicle alum, has served as the project manager for the endeavor. He reports that the concept approved by the Chronicle's board calls for:

• A newsroom for a fully-integrated, multimedia news organization.
  
• Adjacent space for a student media incubator.
  
• The newsroom would be set in a larger media center, presumably shared by other student and academic groups.
  
• A central location so the new building will be at the crossroads of campus life

The plan is the culmination of 18 months of work with support from a News Challenge grant from the Knight Foundation. O'Brien has chronicled the work on his blog with hopes of sharing knowledge with other student and professional media organizations.

How will the newsroom of tomorrow function?

If you didn't get to attend The Next Newsroom conference, April 3-4 in Durham, N.C., check out the project's Web site for blog posts, photos, reflections and ideas.

The Next Newsroom Project is an effort to design the ideal newsroom for The Chronicle, the student newspaper at Duke University. Alumni, students and news professionals have come together to help plan the project, which is being funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of the Knight News Challenge Grant program.

Other coverage:

• Duke Chronicle
  
• Twitter
  
• The News and Observer
  

Sounds like a fascinating dicussion; sorry I missed it!

Coverage of two student deaths raises questions

The Duke Chronicle ran an interesting story last week about differences in news coverage surrounding the deaths of two college students in the Durham-Chapel Hill area in recent months.

Ted Vaden, the public editor of The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C. (my former newspaper) followed up with a column yesterday.

The killing of Eve Carson, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill student body president, shocked the community. Student and community newspapers ran front-page stories of the crime and national network and cable television covered it. Vigils held in her honor attracted thousands. North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley offered a reward of as much as $10,000 and the UNC Board of Trustees offered $25,000 for any leads in the Carson case.

By contrast, coverage of the slaying of Duke graduate student Abhijit Mahato, shot and killed Jan. 18 in his home, was a quiet affair. No rewards were offered in connection with the death of Mahato, an international student from India. A vigil attracted 100 people, according to news accounts.

Vaden's column notes that the killing of another student--Denita Smith, a 25-year-old black graduate student at N.C. Central University who was killed in January 2007--also received relatively little news coverage.

Vaden contends that several important differences in the cases--prominence of the individuals, details of the crime, availability of information from police and other authorities--"explained, if not justified, the varying news coverage."

Certainly, Carson's prominence as an elected official on campus thrust her into a somewhat different news category than Smith and Mahato. But the discrepancies in coverage raise troubling questions all journalists should think about.