Students at San Jose State University plan to launch The Spartan Review, a new conservative monthly newspaper, according to the Spartan Daily, the mainstream daily newspaper on campus.
The new newspaper will get start-up funding from the Leadership Institute, which calls itself the "premier training ground for tomorrow's conservative leaders." The institute’s Campus Leadership Program helps students start independent conservative groups and newspapers on college campuses across the country, according to the organization's Web site.
“My goal is to eventually have one or more independent conservative student groups or newspapers on every college campus in America,” Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute, said in a press release issued in June. “I fully expect to double the number of colleges with active groups battling the leftist bias on campus by the end of 2007.”
The Collegiate Network, also supports conservative college newspapers with financial support and technical assistance.
But conservative publications aren't the only ones getting outside help. On the left, Campus Progress of the Center for American Progress works to support progressive student publications through grants, training and mentorship. The organization is accepting applications for the 2007-2008 school year, according to its Web site.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Colorado State U Republicans launch newspaper
Less than three weeks after The Rocky Mountain Collegian at Colorado State University published the infamous "Taser This... FUCK BUSH" editorial, College Republicans on campus launched their own student newspaper.
Members of the group began distributing issues of The Ram Republic on Monday, according to The Rocky Mountain News. The lead headline: "What's Next for McSwane Journalism?" refers to J. David McSwane, the editor-in-chief of The Rocky Mountain Collegian.
"Our goal is to give the students of Colorado State University a thoughtful and robust forum to promote conservative ideals," the newspaper says in a mission statement on its Web page. "We believe these ideals have been foreign on our campus and in the mainstream media at large. By doing this, we hope to challenge the misguided stereotypes of conservatives and expose the dangerous and contagious realities of liberalism."
Bobby Carson, editor of The Ram Republic told the Rocky Mountain News that Republicans were already were thinking about starting a publication when the Collegian published the anti-Bush editorial.
"That accelerated our efforts," Carson told the paper.
The Ram Republic already has a Facebook group with 70 members.
Note: I've changed the headline on this post because it was misinterpreted to refer to Colorado College rather than College Republicans in the state of Colorado.
Members of the group began distributing issues of The Ram Republic on Monday, according to The Rocky Mountain News. The lead headline: "What's Next for McSwane Journalism?" refers to J. David McSwane, the editor-in-chief of The Rocky Mountain Collegian."Our goal is to give the students of Colorado State University a thoughtful and robust forum to promote conservative ideals," the newspaper says in a mission statement on its Web page. "We believe these ideals have been foreign on our campus and in the mainstream media at large. By doing this, we hope to challenge the misguided stereotypes of conservatives and expose the dangerous and contagious realities of liberalism."
Bobby Carson, editor of The Ram Republic told the Rocky Mountain News that Republicans were already were thinking about starting a publication when the Collegian published the anti-Bush editorial.
"That accelerated our efforts," Carson told the paper.
The Ram Republic already has a Facebook group with 70 members.
Note: I've changed the headline on this post because it was misinterpreted to refer to Colorado College rather than College Republicans in the state of Colorado.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Editor apologizes for cartoon
The editor of The Kentucky Kernel has apologized for running a controversial cartoon after more than 100 University of Kentucky students protested outside the newspaper office.
"Sometimes it is necessary to be offensive or controversial to make a point," Editor-in-Chief Keith Smiley wrote in an editor's note posted on the newspaper's Web site Friday. "In this case, we crossed the line, and any message in the cartoon was obscured by its offensiveness." The note will be published in Monday's edition of the paper, according to the Associated Press.
The cartoon, published in Friday's paper, was intended to poke fun at the Greek system. It depicts a bare-chested African-American student on an auction block, one leg in chains. A white auctioneer, calling the student a "young buck," takes bids from three fictional fraternities, Aryan Omega, Kappa Kappa Kappa and Alpha Caucasian.
The day the cartoon was published students gathered outside the building that houses the newspaper office and the journalism school to protest.
Bradley Fletcher, the cartoonist, also apologized in a statement posted on the newspaper's Web site Friday.
"After hearing the many responses, I feel only apologetic and upset with myself for being so hasty in drawing the cartoon without thinking about how it could be read from perspectives besides my own," Fletcher wrote. "The fact that I drew the cartoon with the images I chose and did not realize how offensive they are shows quite clearly the racial divide in our society which I was attempting to attack."
To its credit, the newspaper responded promptly to the controversy, putting apologies on the Web within hours of the publication of the cartoon.
The Kentucky Kernel is at least the third student newspaper in the past month to make headlines for running a racially offensive cartoon.
In September The Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, caught flak for a cartoon entitled “Ethiopian Food Fight,” which depicted emaciated black men dressed in loincloths fighting each other for food. (See previous post.) Cartoonist Grant Woolard, who had offended readers with several other cartoons, was forced to resign, according to The Washington Post.
On Sept. 17, students and faculty at Central Connecticut State University demonstrated against a comic strip printed by The Recorder, the weekly student newspaper there.
The strip depicted talking shapes in discussion about a 14-year-old Latina girl, who was tied up in a closet and urinated on. The Recorder printed a disclaimer under the cartoon stating it "does not support the kidnapping of (and subsequent urinating on) children of any age or ethnicity." (The paper was also criticized in February when it published a satirical column entitled "Rape only hurts if you fight it.") Many have called for the ouster of the student paper's executive editor, Mark Rowan, but he remains at the helm.
Jack Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, issued a statement in response to cartoon, recognizing that the First Amendment protects the paper's right to publish it but chastising Rowan and the paper for poor judgment. He outlined several action steps, including pulling university advertising from the paper, hiring an adviser for the paper and establishing a journalism major.
What policies or safeguards does your paper have for the publication of cartoons and other potentially offensive material? Can a cartoonist make a sharp political statement without offending some people? Post a comment here.
"Sometimes it is necessary to be offensive or controversial to make a point," Editor-in-Chief Keith Smiley wrote in an editor's note posted on the newspaper's Web site Friday. "In this case, we crossed the line, and any message in the cartoon was obscured by its offensiveness." The note will be published in Monday's edition of the paper, according to the Associated Press.The cartoon, published in Friday's paper, was intended to poke fun at the Greek system. It depicts a bare-chested African-American student on an auction block, one leg in chains. A white auctioneer, calling the student a "young buck," takes bids from three fictional fraternities, Aryan Omega, Kappa Kappa Kappa and Alpha Caucasian.
The day the cartoon was published students gathered outside the building that houses the newspaper office and the journalism school to protest.
Bradley Fletcher, the cartoonist, also apologized in a statement posted on the newspaper's Web site Friday.
"After hearing the many responses, I feel only apologetic and upset with myself for being so hasty in drawing the cartoon without thinking about how it could be read from perspectives besides my own," Fletcher wrote. "The fact that I drew the cartoon with the images I chose and did not realize how offensive they are shows quite clearly the racial divide in our society which I was attempting to attack."
To its credit, the newspaper responded promptly to the controversy, putting apologies on the Web within hours of the publication of the cartoon.
The Kentucky Kernel is at least the third student newspaper in the past month to make headlines for running a racially offensive cartoon.
In September The Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, caught flak for a cartoon entitled “Ethiopian Food Fight,” which depicted emaciated black men dressed in loincloths fighting each other for food. (See previous post.) Cartoonist Grant Woolard, who had offended readers with several other cartoons, was forced to resign, according to The Washington Post.
On Sept. 17, students and faculty at Central Connecticut State University demonstrated against a comic strip printed by The Recorder, the weekly student newspaper there.
The strip depicted talking shapes in discussion about a 14-year-old Latina girl, who was tied up in a closet and urinated on. The Recorder printed a disclaimer under the cartoon stating it "does not support the kidnapping of (and subsequent urinating on) children of any age or ethnicity." (The paper was also criticized in February when it published a satirical column entitled "Rape only hurts if you fight it.") Many have called for the ouster of the student paper's executive editor, Mark Rowan, but he remains at the helm.
Jack Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, issued a statement in response to cartoon, recognizing that the First Amendment protects the paper's right to publish it but chastising Rowan and the paper for poor judgment. He outlined several action steps, including pulling university advertising from the paper, hiring an adviser for the paper and establishing a journalism major.
What policies or safeguards does your paper have for the publication of cartoons and other potentially offensive material? Can a cartoonist make a sharp political statement without offending some people? Post a comment here.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Rocky Mountain Collegian editor keeps job
The editor of The Rocky Mountain Collegian, who sparked a national debate about college press freedom after writing an editorial that said "Taser this... Fuck Bush," will keep his job, according to a ruling from a student-run governing board.
The Board of Student Communications (BSC) at Colorado State University publicly admonished Collegian Editor-in-Chief J. David McSwane at a meeting Thursday night, but it decided not to fire him because "the September 21 editorial was an expression of opinion, which we regard as protected by the First Amendment," the board said in a statement.
Read all about it at:
Whether you supported The Rocky Mountain Collegian or thought it played an immature stunt, you gotta admit the paper did launch important discussion about the freedom of the student press. Here are some of the editorials college newspapers ran this week in response:
Did your student newspaper run an editorial commenting on The Rocky Mountain Collegian case? Post a link in a message here.
The Board of Student Communications (BSC) at Colorado State University publicly admonished Collegian Editor-in-Chief J. David McSwane at a meeting Thursday night, but it decided not to fire him because "the September 21 editorial was an expression of opinion, which we regard as protected by the First Amendment," the board said in a statement.
Read all about it at:
Whether you supported The Rocky Mountain Collegian or thought it played an immature stunt, you gotta admit the paper did launch important discussion about the freedom of the student press. Here are some of the editorials college newspapers ran this week in response:
- Oregon Daily Emerald, University of Oregon
- The State Press, Arizona State University
The - The Daily Trojan, University of Southern California
- The California Aggie, University of California, Davis
Did your student newspaper run an editorial commenting on The Rocky Mountain Collegian case? Post a link in a message here.
Demoted journalism chair speaks out
As many of you know, the chair of the journalism department at California State University, Long Beach was forced out of his position last month after criticizing a dean's proposal to eliminate the print edition of the campus newspaper, the Daily 49er. (For background see previous post on this issue and story in the Long Beach Press-Telegram.)
William Babcock, who remains a tenured professor in the Journalism Department, told me he's not trying to get his chair position back, but he would appreciate support for the student newspaper, which he fears the administration is trying to silence. He notes that the four-day daily publishes about 10,000 newspapers a day, Monday through Thursday. The Web site, meanwhile, gets an average of 800 hits a day.
He shares the column below, which was first published Sunday as an op-ed piece in the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
In journalism, and specifically in college media circles, there is great debate about the move to online-only publishing. Some think it's the wave of the future; others think online newspapers, particularly at the college level, still don't attract sufficient advertising dollars and readers to survive and thrive. But most of us agree on one thing: Such a decision shouldn't be made from the top down. It's too easy for administrators to use online-only publishing as a ruse to quiet, if not silence, the student press.
He'll collect them and present them to the appropriate administrators at CSU Long Beach.
How to resolve the 49er dispute
By William A. Babcock
Faculty members at California State University, Long Beach's Department of Journalism have a two-fold task: to help students understand the mass media and prepare them to survive and thrive in their chosen media field.
One of the best ways journalism instructors can foster the respect for a free and ethical press to both journalism majors and students from all academic disciplines is to provide them with opportunities for publication, be it in traditional print or photojournalism or online writing or graphics or streaming video. Nearly all comparably sized universities in America thus have hefty print and online daily campus newspapers.
Since coming here as department chair six years ago I have seen the number of majors in CSULB's Department of Journalism nearly double as the department has implemented a new student-friendly curriculum, brought in outstanding faculty with professional experience and doctoral degrees and recently become the home for the Southern California News Council. Earlier this year the Department of Journalism received a strong vote of endorsement by an Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications pre-accreditation team that came to Long Beach to assess Journalism's program.
The ACEJMC team, however, was critical of CSULB's lack of support for the campus newspaper, the Daily 49er, saying, "The University needs to face up to the challenge of sustaining a first-rate, independent campus newspaper." The ACEJMC report added, "Virtually no such independent campus papers can and do survive in U.S. universities on advertising revenue alone."
Unfortunately, the Daily 49er now survives almost exclusively on ad revenues, which lately have totaled about $300,000 per year. Thus, the print campus daily newspaper often consists of only a few pages of tabloid-sized newsprint. The Daily 49er generates nearly all of this advertising revenue. By comparison, the online version of the newspaper attracts about $500 in advertising dollars.
CSULB's Department of Journalism is one of nearly two-dozen departments in the College of Liberal Arts, which at one time paid the salary packages of two full-time professional Daily 49er employees and, more recently, made up for any red ink the paper incurred - a figure that often was between $20,000 and $30,000 per year, according to Daily 49er financial records.
Recently, CLA Dean Gerry Riposa said he is considering eliminating the daily print campus newspaper or reducing it to a weekly print paper, and plans to conduct a study to see if this might be feasible.
When he came to the Friday, Sept. 14, departmental meeting in Journalism's conference room to discuss such a study, three student journalists from the Daily 49er newsroom across the hall entered the conference room. A reporter from Long Beach's Grunion Gazette weekly also came into the conference room.
After a few minutes Riposa left the conference room, and was widely overheard in the hallway saying he did not want to discuss a feasibility study with student journalists present, and left the building. Two hours later a Sept. 12-dated memo from Riposa was hand delivered to the Department of Journalism announcing that as of September 2007 CLA would no longer cover cost overruns for the paper from its general funds.
The next working day Riposa said he was removing me as chairman of the Department of Journalism at the end of the week, even though I had been re-elected in May by Journalism faculty to another three-year term. I requested that he retain me as chair until the end of the 2007/08 academic year to avoid disruption to the Department of Journalism. He denied this request.
The purpose of this op-ed piece is not to argue with a dean's ability to dismiss a departmental chair, as chairs serve at the "pleasure" of deans. Rather, the hope is that:
1. Dean Riposa will once again decide that CLA has a stake in having a strong, vibrant, informative daily print and online campus newspaper, and that the college will help fund this daily newspaper accordingly.
2. Provost Karen Gould realizes that a strong, well-funded campus daily newspaper provides an invaluable service to and for all students in a way that is impossible for a journalism class- or lab-newspaper produced as the result of a course assignment for journalism majors.
3. President F. King Alexander exercises his ability to have students pay a modest $4 per semester "circulation" fee for receiving the print Daily 49er, and also provides university funds to offset the salary package (about $75,000) each year of one professional daily campus newspaper employee.
With a campus faculty and student body as large and diverse as that of CSULB, we can't afford to close this vital avenue of dialogue within our community. Riposa, Gould and Alexander are relatively new in their respective positions. The hope is that they all will understand the benefits of fiscally supporting a strong, non-lab print and online daily campus newspaper to which all 35,500 students have been welcome to contribute and of which everyone at CSULB will be proud.
William A. Babcock is a professor in CSULB's Department of Journalism and executive director of the newly formed Southern California News Council. In a former life he directed the University of Minnesota's Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law, served as senior international news editor and writing coach for the Christian Science Monitor and was on the faculty of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
William Babcock, who remains a tenured professor in the Journalism Department, told me he's not trying to get his chair position back, but he would appreciate support for the student newspaper, which he fears the administration is trying to silence. He notes that the four-day daily publishes about 10,000 newspapers a day, Monday through Thursday. The Web site, meanwhile, gets an average of 800 hits a day.He shares the column below, which was first published Sunday as an op-ed piece in the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
In journalism, and specifically in college media circles, there is great debate about the move to online-only publishing. Some think it's the wave of the future; others think online newspapers, particularly at the college level, still don't attract sufficient advertising dollars and readers to survive and thrive. But most of us agree on one thing: Such a decision shouldn't be made from the top down. It's too easy for administrators to use online-only publishing as a ruse to quiet, if not silence, the student press.
If you're concerned about what's happening at CSU Long Beach and want to do something, write a letter to:
William A. Babcock
Professor, Department of Journalism
& Executive Director, Southern California News Council
1250 Bellflower Blvd., SS/PA 024
California State University, Long Beach
Long Beach, CA 90840-4601
E-mail: wbabcock@csulb.edu
He'll collect them and present them to the appropriate administrators at CSU Long Beach.
How to resolve the 49er dispute
By William A. Babcock
Faculty members at California State University, Long Beach's Department of Journalism have a two-fold task: to help students understand the mass media and prepare them to survive and thrive in their chosen media field.
One of the best ways journalism instructors can foster the respect for a free and ethical press to both journalism majors and students from all academic disciplines is to provide them with opportunities for publication, be it in traditional print or photojournalism or online writing or graphics or streaming video. Nearly all comparably sized universities in America thus have hefty print and online daily campus newspapers.
Since coming here as department chair six years ago I have seen the number of majors in CSULB's Department of Journalism nearly double as the department has implemented a new student-friendly curriculum, brought in outstanding faculty with professional experience and doctoral degrees and recently become the home for the Southern California News Council. Earlier this year the Department of Journalism received a strong vote of endorsement by an Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications pre-accreditation team that came to Long Beach to assess Journalism's program.
The ACEJMC team, however, was critical of CSULB's lack of support for the campus newspaper, the Daily 49er, saying, "The University needs to face up to the challenge of sustaining a first-rate, independent campus newspaper." The ACEJMC report added, "Virtually no such independent campus papers can and do survive in U.S. universities on advertising revenue alone."
Unfortunately, the Daily 49er now survives almost exclusively on ad revenues, which lately have totaled about $300,000 per year. Thus, the print campus daily newspaper often consists of only a few pages of tabloid-sized newsprint. The Daily 49er generates nearly all of this advertising revenue. By comparison, the online version of the newspaper attracts about $500 in advertising dollars.
CSULB's Department of Journalism is one of nearly two-dozen departments in the College of Liberal Arts, which at one time paid the salary packages of two full-time professional Daily 49er employees and, more recently, made up for any red ink the paper incurred - a figure that often was between $20,000 and $30,000 per year, according to Daily 49er financial records.
Recently, CLA Dean Gerry Riposa said he is considering eliminating the daily print campus newspaper or reducing it to a weekly print paper, and plans to conduct a study to see if this might be feasible.
When he came to the Friday, Sept. 14, departmental meeting in Journalism's conference room to discuss such a study, three student journalists from the Daily 49er newsroom across the hall entered the conference room. A reporter from Long Beach's Grunion Gazette weekly also came into the conference room.
After a few minutes Riposa left the conference room, and was widely overheard in the hallway saying he did not want to discuss a feasibility study with student journalists present, and left the building. Two hours later a Sept. 12-dated memo from Riposa was hand delivered to the Department of Journalism announcing that as of September 2007 CLA would no longer cover cost overruns for the paper from its general funds.
The next working day Riposa said he was removing me as chairman of the Department of Journalism at the end of the week, even though I had been re-elected in May by Journalism faculty to another three-year term. I requested that he retain me as chair until the end of the 2007/08 academic year to avoid disruption to the Department of Journalism. He denied this request.
The purpose of this op-ed piece is not to argue with a dean's ability to dismiss a departmental chair, as chairs serve at the "pleasure" of deans. Rather, the hope is that:
1. Dean Riposa will once again decide that CLA has a stake in having a strong, vibrant, informative daily print and online campus newspaper, and that the college will help fund this daily newspaper accordingly.
2. Provost Karen Gould realizes that a strong, well-funded campus daily newspaper provides an invaluable service to and for all students in a way that is impossible for a journalism class- or lab-newspaper produced as the result of a course assignment for journalism majors.
3. President F. King Alexander exercises his ability to have students pay a modest $4 per semester "circulation" fee for receiving the print Daily 49er, and also provides university funds to offset the salary package (about $75,000) each year of one professional daily campus newspaper employee.
With a campus faculty and student body as large and diverse as that of CSULB, we can't afford to close this vital avenue of dialogue within our community. Riposa, Gould and Alexander are relatively new in their respective positions. The hope is that they all will understand the benefits of fiscally supporting a strong, non-lab print and online daily campus newspaper to which all 35,500 students have been welcome to contribute and of which everyone at CSULB will be proud.
William A. Babcock is a professor in CSULB's Department of Journalism and executive director of the newly formed Southern California News Council. In a former life he directed the University of Minnesota's Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law, served as senior international news editor and writing coach for the Christian Science Monitor and was on the faculty of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
October Story of the Month
October's Story of the Month: The Daily Helmsman's coverage of the killing of University of Memphis football player Taylor Bradford.
Bradford, a defensive lineman for the University of Memphis Tigers, was shot to death in his car on the Memphis campus Sunday night. The Helmsman had journalists on the scene almost immediately.
The staff did a top-notch job of covering the story -- so good, in fact that several professional news organizations attributed information to the student newspaper. The Helmsman was the first media organization to identify Bradford and it kept up its coverage of the story all through the week. You can read some of the stories here and here.
Mediaverse, an online trade publication that covers the Memphis media, has an interesting interview this week with Editor-in-Chief Trey Heath and Managing Editor Nevin Batiwalla.
Other notable Story of the Month entries:
The Northeastern at Northeastern State University put out a special edition last month to report the Student Senate's "no confidence" vote of the acting university president. "We covered the story, ran back to the newsroom and rushed to send the paper to print that night," writes Editor Dale Denwalt II. The paper publishes weekly and its Web site only has PDFs of the print edition. (The editors showed enterprise in publishing a special edition, but a live Web site would have solved the problem.) Check out The Northeastern's special Sept. 27 edition.
The Miami Hurricane, the twice-weekly paper at the University of Miami, put together a nice package on college roommates with a story on a roommate-matching system the university may put into place next year and a "Roommates from Hell" sidebar. Nice work!
Send your Story of the Month submissions to collegenewspaper@gmail.com.
We'd love to hear more from editors and reporters involved in the Taylor Bradford story. Post a comment here.
Bradford, a defensive lineman for the University of Memphis Tigers, was shot to death in his car on the Memphis campus Sunday night. The Helmsman had journalists on the scene almost immediately. The staff did a top-notch job of covering the story -- so good, in fact that several professional news organizations attributed information to the student newspaper. The Helmsman was the first media organization to identify Bradford and it kept up its coverage of the story all through the week. You can read some of the stories here and here.
Mediaverse, an online trade publication that covers the Memphis media, has an interesting interview this week with Editor-in-Chief Trey Heath and Managing Editor Nevin Batiwalla.
Other notable Story of the Month entries:
The Northeastern at Northeastern State University put out a special edition last month to report the Student Senate's "no confidence" vote of the acting university president. "We covered the story, ran back to the newsroom and rushed to send the paper to print that night," writes Editor Dale Denwalt II. The paper publishes weekly and its Web site only has PDFs of the print edition. (The editors showed enterprise in publishing a special edition, but a live Web site would have solved the problem.) Check out The Northeastern's special Sept. 27 edition.
The Miami Hurricane, the twice-weekly paper at the University of Miami, put together a nice package on college roommates with a story on a roommate-matching system the university may put into place next year and a "Roommates from Hell" sidebar. Nice work! Send your Story of the Month submissions to collegenewspaper@gmail.com.
We'd love to hear more from editors and reporters involved in the Taylor Bradford story. Post a comment here.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Kashmir university students launch newspaper
Students at Kashmir University launched the university's first student newspaper today, according to an article in Greater Kashmir.
The Student Herald, a weekly newspaper, will be produced by students at the university's Media Education Research Centre.
According to an article in Kashmir Newz, four students decided to start their own paper after the Media Education Research Centre failed to respond to students' demand for one. The centre produces an annual journal Media Times. "In absence of a news room, the foursome of Mohammad Numan, Zahid Rafiq, Tasim Zahid and Danish Nabi, the second semester students of MERC, are seen working on their laptop computers under the shade of majestic Chinar trees in the Naseem Bagh on the banks of world famous Dal Lake," the article says.
The Kashmir University administration has expressed support for the new newspaper.
"It is indeed heartening to find that students of Media Education Research Centre have planned to publish a weekly newspaper edited by students themselves," Professor Abdul Wahid Qureshi, vice chancellor of Kashmir University, writes in the first issue of the newspaper. "In this development, I find a dream coming true as bringing out a regular publication by our media students has been one of our cherished desires. I hope the students will run the publication in a truly professional manner. I have no doubt that this new venture and the practical training that it involves will greatly help these students to sharpen their professional skills before they face the challenging task lying ahead."
The first edition is a four-page black and white newspaper. No word on a Web site yet, but give them time.
We welcome The Student Herald to the fold of college newspapers! Keep us posted on your progress.
NOTE: This story has been corrected, thanks to messages from a student giving us the correct name of the newspaper and of one of the students involved. Thanks!
The Student Herald, a weekly newspaper, will be produced by students at the university's Media Education Research Centre.
According to an article in Kashmir Newz, four students decided to start their own paper after the Media Education Research Centre failed to respond to students' demand for one. The centre produces an annual journal Media Times. "In absence of a news room, the foursome of Mohammad Numan, Zahid Rafiq, Tasim Zahid and Danish Nabi, the second semester students of MERC, are seen working on their laptop computers under the shade of majestic Chinar trees in the Naseem Bagh on the banks of world famous Dal Lake," the article says.
The Kashmir University administration has expressed support for the new newspaper.
"It is indeed heartening to find that students of Media Education Research Centre have planned to publish a weekly newspaper edited by students themselves," Professor Abdul Wahid Qureshi, vice chancellor of Kashmir University, writes in the first issue of the newspaper. "In this development, I find a dream coming true as bringing out a regular publication by our media students has been one of our cherished desires. I hope the students will run the publication in a truly professional manner. I have no doubt that this new venture and the practical training that it involves will greatly help these students to sharpen their professional skills before they face the challenging task lying ahead."
The first edition is a four-page black and white newspaper. No word on a Web site yet, but give them time.
We welcome The Student Herald to the fold of college newspapers! Keep us posted on your progress.
NOTE: This story has been corrected, thanks to messages from a student giving us the correct name of the newspaper and of one of the students involved. Thanks!
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
The rise of alternative student media
Inside HigherEd.com ran an interesting piece last week about alternative student publications that seem to be “going beyond what the mainstream, professional press was addressing,” according to Dan Reimold, a journalism Ph.D. candidate at Ohio University.
The article notes that these new publications, both print and online, are less chained to the conventions of mainstream journalism and may be more able to experiment and innovate.
Among the publications cited as examples are:
Are you working on a new student publication? Tell us about it by posting a comment here.
The article notes that these new publications, both print and online, are less chained to the conventions of mainstream journalism and may be more able to experiment and innovate.Among the publications cited as examples are:
- SpartanEdge, a video-heavy online publication at Michigan State University (the Web site's tag line: "The future of online campus news is now.")
- The Big Green, also a member of Michigan State's Alternative Media Alliance
- unbound at the College of New Jersey
- Speakeasy at Ohio University
- NU Comment at Northwestern University.
Are you working on a new student publication? Tell us about it by posting a comment here.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Rocky Mountain Collegian Update
A reader asks for an update on the Rocky Mountain Collegian flap over the "Taser This... FUCK Bush" editorial:
What was the outcome of CSU's Board of Student Communication meeting? Leave it to the national media to cover the initial flap but not follow up.
The editor is scheduled to have a hearing before the Board of Student Communications, an independent body that oversees the newspaper, on Thursday. We'll report the outcome as soon as we hear.
In the meantime here's the latest on the story from The New York Times.
What was the outcome of CSU's Board of Student Communication meeting? Leave it to the national media to cover the initial flap but not follow up.
The editor is scheduled to have a hearing before the Board of Student Communications, an independent body that oversees the newspaper, on Thursday. We'll report the outcome as soon as we hear.
In the meantime here's the latest on the story from The New York Times.
Looking for story ideas? NY Times Mag
If you haven't already seen it, be sure to pick up -- or read online -- this week's New York Times Magazine.
The theme is "The College Issue" and it's full of great ideas student newspapers can localize to their own campus communities -- college admissions, Teach for America, affirmative action, and new experiments in education like re-engineering engineering and efforts to bring No Child Left Behind to the university level.
There's also a moving video about suicide on campus.
Be sure to check out the essays from the College Essay Contest. The 600 essays from around the country are responses to "What's the Matter With College," an essay by the historian Rick Perlstein, published in July. They are searchable by school and state. If you find one you like from your college or university, contact the writer and see what else they have to say. Maybe you'll find your next columnist.
The theme is "The College Issue" and it's full of great ideas student newspapers can localize to their own campus communities -- college admissions, Teach for America, affirmative action, and new experiments in education like re-engineering engineering and efforts to bring No Child Left Behind to the university level.
There's also a moving video about suicide on campus.
Be sure to check out the essays from the College Essay Contest. The 600 essays from around the country are responses to "What's the Matter With College," an essay by the historian Rick Perlstein, published in July. They are searchable by school and state. If you find one you like from your college or university, contact the writer and see what else they have to say. Maybe you'll find your next columnist.
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