Seeking Story of the Month submissions

Did your paper do something over the summer or for the start of the school year that you’re particularly proud of? Do you have a recent story (text, slideshow, photo, video, multimedia, whatever) that’s innovative, in-depth, investigative or in some other way inspiring?

Send it to us!

The Student Newspaper Survival Blog is seeking submissions for its Story of the Month feature. This is not a “best of” contest. It’s a way to spotlight work being done by student newspapers that other student journalists can learn from. In addition to showing the piece, we’ll run a How I Got That Story column from the creator(s). Stories needn't be text -- they can be photo stories, video stories, etc.

The first Story of the Month was Stu Woo’s profile for the Brown Daily Herald of Reade Seligmann, one of the Duke lacrosse players who was acquitted of sexually assaulting a stripper invited to a team party. Woo showed great enterprise in tracking down Seligmann, who was planning to transfer to Brown in the fall, and landing an interview. Woo got off work early at his internship with the Providence Journal to drive down to New York City and interview Seligmann. He wrote an in-depth, compelling narrative. Woo shared how he got the story with Student Newspaper Survival Blog readers, providing inspiration for other student journalists.

To submit a Story of the Month candidate, send an e-mail to collegenewspaper@gmail.com with a link, PDF, JPG, GIF or TIFF file. Please include a 200- to 500-word statement explaining how the story came together. Deadline for this month is September 4, 2007 for work published in August.

In addition to the Story of the Month, the Student Newspaper Survival Blog aims to highlight innovative features, ethical challenges, special projects, experiments in journalism, legal issues, etc., related to college journalism. Help us keep up on the latest by e-mailing collegenewspaper@gmail.com with your tips.

Small newspaper follows a disaster

When staff members of The Conquistador, the biweekly student newspaper at Dodge City Community College in Kansas, put out the last newspaper of the spring semester they had no idea they'd be missing what is likely to be the biggest story of their college journalism careers.

On May 4, a tornado virtually obliterated Greensburg, Kansas, just 46 miles from the Dodge City campus.

The newspaper doesn't have a Web site yet, so it had no place to post stories. (Adviser Lionel Tipton says the staff is planning to launch a Web edition soon.)

The tiny staff pledged to follow the story when they got back to school. This week
The Conquistador offered a comprehensive report on the aftermath of the disaster.

"I am very proud of the way my two students handled this story and pictures," Tipton wrote in an email praising the efforts of Editor in Chief Mallory Anderson and photographer Josh Roesener. "Five of our 12 pages are devoted to Greensburg. The editor also addressed her feelings in a sidebar commentary piece."

The staff snagged an interview with the busy city administrator and wrote about nursing professors from the college who volunteered after the tornado hit. The paper also offered a look at the college's plan for a tornado, including a map of shelter sites.

"Of the 10 to 12 on our staff, only a few have any prior experience," Tipton says. "So for them to undertake this package was huge, in my opinion. They performed their duties without question or complaint, and the final product was quite satisfying."

Are you proud of something your staff has done? Tell us about it by sending an email to collegenewspaper@gmail.com.

Covering Suicide

An adviser on the College Media Advisers listserv recently posed a question about how student newspapers should treat suicide.

This passage is taken from The Student Newspaper Survival Guide

Deciding whether and how to cover a suicide is one of the most common and most poignant ethical dilemmas a student editor may face. And unlike with many other ethical issues, looking to the professional press isn’t necessarily instructive. Most professional newspapers don’t cover suicide unless:
• it causes a public spectacle (a jump onto a freeway streaming with cars, for example, or after a standoff with police)
• it’s committed in connection with a homicide, kidnapping or other serious crime
• it involves a public figure

Student newspapers, however, frequently do cover suicides of students or faculty, particularly if they happen on campus. Why? For one thing, the suicide of a member of the campus community often has significant impact on a large segment of the school--an entire academic department or a whole dorm may feel traumatized by the event.

For another, suicide is a major social problem among college students (it’s the third leading cause of death among 15- to 24-year-olds, after accidents and homicide, according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), and many student newspapers use a suicidal incident as a news peg for an educational piece about the problem.

A year after a freshman at Northwestern University killed himself in his dorm room, for example, The Daily Northwestern ran a seven-part series on mental health. The series, “State of Mind,” looked at eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders and mental health care, as well as depression and suicide.

“There were all these issues that didn’t find a place in our regular news coverage,” says Elaine Helm, who worked on the series in the fall of 2003 and became editor-in-chief of the newspaper the following year. “We wanted to find an appropriate way to reflect on those issues and find a context for this one incident that touched so many lives.” The series won several awards, including one from the National Mental Health Association.

When deciding whether to cover a suicide in your own paper, ask yourself these questions:
• Was the suicide committed on campus?
• Was the suicide committed in a public place, such as a park or downtown street?
• Was the student or faculty member prominent on your campus?
• Does the suicide appear to be part of a trend?
• Will coverage of the suicide help the campus community in any way?
If the answer to one or more of these questions is yes, your newspaper may decide it’s important to run a story.

Some newspapers also consider the family’s wishes when deciding whether to write about a suicide. Journalists rarely contemplate the impact their stories will have on family members, but in the case of a suicide, editors may want to take into account how open the family is to talking about the circumstances of the death.

Another factor to consider is the risk of “suicide contagion” or copycat suicides. Researchers have found that suicides tend to increase when a particular incident gets a lot of media play. This copycat phenomenon is particularly evident when coverage is sensational and when media stories highlight the mode of suicide. For example, in the year after a student fell to his death at New York University, four other students there took their lives the same way.

The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma offers these guidelines for covering suicide.

MTV to air series on high school newspaper

MTV has given the green light to “The Paper,” an eight-part series following the staff of a real high school newspaper.

The unscripted series will follow students working on The Circuit, the award-winning newspaper at Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Fla. The series is scheduled to air in the winter of 2008.

"Reality shows are so often stupid,” Cypress Bay journalism teacher Rhonda Weiss told The Miami Herald. “These kids are really bright. It's nice to see the focus on these kids,"

Executive producer Marshall Eisen told Variety that MTV is avoiding the phrase "reality series" for this show. Rather than fabricating a drama, the producers found a high school newsroom and filmed it. "It's more of a docu-series, where we're talking about the lives of our participants," Variety quotes Eisen as saying. "And it's just a great way to get inside high school."

"The Paper" is produced by MTV News and Docs, the "serious" branch of MTV.

The Miami Herald has an audio interview with Amanda Lorber, editor in chief of The Circuit.

We'd love to hear from the staff of The Circuit about their MTV experience. Post a comment below.

Northern Star "flooded with news"

Four days before the Northern Star, the student newspaper at Northern Illinois University, was planning to roll out its new 24-hour news operation and redesigned Web site, the paper faced one of its biggest stories in years: a severe storm followed by a flood that forced the campus to close.


The newspaper staff was in a training session for the revamped news site Thursday afternoon when the story broke.

"Assignments went out and reporters snapped into action," Managing Editor Michael Swiontek wrote in an opinion blog about the newspaper's response to the story. "It was what an exciting newsroom can be — scrambling to relay horrible news."

The paper managed to post three news updates on its Web site before its server went down Friday, Swiontek wrote. But the site was back up Monday, with lots of follow-up stories on the flood.

"We got on-the-job training," Swiontek wrote in his blog. "Last week’s news was perfect practice for a great semester of covering breaking news."

The Northern Star's new Web site is a model for college papers around the country. The staff has pledged to cover news as it breaks, putting stories online first and posting updates on major stories throughout the day.

"Our first and foremost priority now is the Web site," Online Editor Justin Smith wrote in a column about the revamped Web site.

In addition, the newspaper is beefing up its coverage with new media enhancements -- blogs, photo slideshows, Podcasts, maps, charts and other graphics. (In case you're wondering what the old site looked like you can see it on this post.)

If you're looking for inspiration, watch for the Northern Star.

And if you're a Northern Star staffer we'd love to hear more about the revamped, re-energized site. Post a comment here.

Princeton Review ranks college newspapers

We may not agree with the rankings or the methods, but The Princeton Review has come out with its annual list of “best” college newspapers. The Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill took the top spot.

The rankings are based on surveys asking 120,000 students at 366 top colleges to rate their schools in dozens of categories and report on their campus experiences. In addition to Best College Newspaper, categories include Best Classroom Experience (Reed College ranked #1), Most Beautiful Campus (Sweet Briar College), Most Liberal Students (Warren Wilson College), Most Conservative Students (Thomas Aquinas College), Biggest Frat & Sorority Scene (DePauw University), Top Party School (West Virginia University), and Stone-Cold Sober School (Brigham Young University).

The rankings are published in the 2008 edition of The Princeton Review's annual college guide Best 366 Colleges and online at http://www.PrincetonReview.com.

One thing to keep in mind: The survey only polled students at the “best” 366 colleges. My university, San Francisco State University, and thousands of others aren’t even in the running.

The Princeton Review came up with the college newspaper rankings based on the survey question “How popular is the newspaper?”

Not exactly scientific.

That said, here are the Princeton Review’s “best” newspapers by rank:

1. The Daily Tar Heel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2. Yale Daily News, Yale University
3. The Daily Pennsylvanian, University of Pennsylvania
4. The Hilltop, Howard University
5. The Red and Black, University of Georgia
6. The Diamondback, University of Maryland-College Park
7. The Harvard Crimson, Harvard University
8. The Daily Athenaeum, West Virginia University
9. The Daily Mississippian, University of Mississippi
10. The Daily Collegian, Penn State-University Park
11. The State News, Michigan State University
12. The Daily Reveille, Louisiana State University
13. Indiana Daily Student, Indiana University at Bloomington
14. The Daily Northwestern, Northwestern University
15. The Duke Chronicle, Duke University
16. The Daily Cardinal, University of Wisconsin-Madison (or do they mean the competing Badger Herald?)
17. The Daily Texan, University of Texas at Austin
18. The Daily Orange, Syracuse University
19. The Independent Florida Alligator, University of Florida
20. The Battalion, Texas A&M University-College Station

Student Newspapers Around the World: Gair Rhydd

Ever wonder what student newspapers are like in other parts of the world? I do, so I've started poking around on the Internet in search of English-language papers in other countries. I thought I'd share what I find with a new occasional feature, Student Newspapers Around the World.

One of my new favorites is Gair Rhydd, the weekly student newspaper at Cardiff University. The paper serves a community of 25,000 students and 5,000 faculty in the center of Wales' capital city and it has a sophisticated, cosmopolitan tone. Gair rhydd means "Free Word" in Welsh, and the paper has a strong tradition of independence.

The paper's Web site is clear and easy to navigate, with special sections for Science & Environment, Jobs & Money, Media, Politics, Health, as well as the usual sports, opinion, A&E and news sections. There's even a special section, Taf Od, written in Welsh. The paper also has a lively letters section.

Gair Rhydd's magazine Quench, offers a somewhat lighter, brighter look at Cardiff University life.

Gair Rhydd clearly takes its watchdog role seriously; it has a special Investigations section. The newspaper has done investigative reports on inadequate access for disabled students, identity theft and legislation allowing universities to spy on students.

Gair Rhydd has been on summer hiatus since June. We look forward to seeing new content up on the Web site soon. We wish our student newspaper friends in Wales all the best for the coming school year.

Want to suggest newspaper for us to highlight in Student Newspapers Around the World? Post a comment here.

Student editor responds to The Loop

Bill Kuchman, editor in chief of The Cardinal Courier at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, writes in response to our post about The Loop, a new Web site for college students in the Rochester, New York area launched by the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Kuchman has been one of the students working on The Loop since the project began in May.

I'd like to address some of the concerns that you brought up on the Student Newspaper Survival Blog, as I feel that I'm in a unique position being the only staffer on The Loop who currently serves as a college newspaper editor in chief.

I was hired to be a part of the initial group of students to work on The Loop. From my over three months working there, I can assure other college newspapers that the content on the site (for the most part) won't infringe on the territory of college newspapers. Believe me, as an editor in chief myself, there was no way that I would let The Loop move in on what college newspapers cover.

When you look at the stories on The Loop, you'll see that they bring in a wider audience and write about issues from a Rochester standpoint, instead of just a singular campus standpoint. For example, if St. John Fisher College's president were to resign, the Courier would cover it as just a news event from Fisher's campus. The Loop would bring in issues involving other campus presidents and recent changes in administrations. This is something that as a college newspaper, we don't have the resources to do, and frankly, isn't what our readership is interested in.

When it comes to staff, I am confident that this issue will resolve itself over time. Fisher's student on The Loop for the fall isn't even a member of the Courier. We at the Courier also have rules and guidelines built into our staff requirements and ethics policy regarding conflict of interest. If the issue of a member of our senior staff taking a job at The Loop were to arise, this is something that we'd address based on these policies. I cannot speak for other papers, but I am highly confident that the Courier has the experience and the understanding of proper journalistic boundaries that will be sufficient to guide us when working with The Loop.

In terms of advertising, we haven't suffered any loss of sponsors - we actually continue to add new accounts. Many of our advertisers have been with us for several years and understand the effectiveness of advertising in a college newspaper, especially a proven product like the Cardinal Courier.

I hope that this will resolve some of the concerns in regards to The Loop. If anyone would like to further discuss this issue with me, I'd be more than happy to talk to them.

--Bill

William R Kuchman
Cardinal Courier Media Executive Editor
Cardinal Courier Editor in Chief
Class of 2008
St. John Fisher College

Post your comments here

Integrated college media sites

There’s been a lot of discussion at college media conventions and on the College Media Advisers listserv about what we should do to compete with sites like BigLickU, SwoCol.com and The Loop that target our readers and advertisers.

Before we start trying to reinvent the wheel, let’s look at some college media sites that already take an integrated approach.

One of the oldest and yet still among the best is bruinwalk, a campus portal for UCLA. In addition to providing links to The Daily Bruin, UCLA TV, UCLA radio and several campus magazines, it offers social and academic networking, a campus calendar, professor reviews, student-to-student book trading, online file storage, and a marketplace of goods and services.

The site is run by Student Media UCLA and governed by a communications board representing a broad cross-section of the campus community, including undergraduate and graduate students, the administration, faculty, alumni and the media professions. According to the bruinwalk About page, the board “is entirely self-supporting. It receives no registration fees or other forms of public support. All of its revenues come from advertising sales in the media.”

Amazingly, it’s been around since 1998, long before Facebook and MySpace!

Another one to look at is InsideVandy at Vanderbilt University. In addition to offering news, features, commentary, photos, videos and other content produced by Vanderbilt student media, it allows members of the Vanderbilt community to create content and interact with one another.

"InsideVandy is built for community participation," the site explains on its About page. "Use it to debate, discuss and connect. Start a blog, post your photos, submit items to the community calendar. Comment on other people's content and create some of your own."

Though not as extensive, the Northern Star has long gone beyond the typical student newspaper Web site with a dining guide, a housing guide and free online marketplace. The Northern Star is also doing some neat stuff with video.

Is your college media organization doing something innovative? What other sites do you look to as models? Tell us about them by posting a comment.

Sex column writing tips

Student newspaper advisers tend to groan when editors decide to launch a sex column, but the truth is these popular features can be fun and even educational without descending into the raunchy.

The key to a good sex column is research—of the computer/library/interviewing variety, not between the sheets. There are lots of great sources of information on the Web and on many college campuses.
Here are some tips for putting together a responsible and helpful, yet fun sex column:

• Report thoroughly. Scout for studies, read books on sexuality, interview experts (scientific researchers and therapists, not just the Casanova on the fourth floor of your dorm). A number of universities have sexuality research centers on campus (see resources below).

• Be inclusive. Remember that your readers aren’t all heterosexuals with the same values and sexual practices.

• Don’t be judgmental. Your column should be respectful of all types of people, from transsexuals and swingers to avowed virgins.

• Put it in an appropriate place. The best location for a sex and/or relationships column is a health/fitness page. If your newspaper doesn't have one, find a place in the features or lifestyle section. Though the column may be the writer's opinion, it does not belong in the opinion section.

• Use clear language. Don’t assume everyone has the same definition of “getting it on,” “going down” and other slang terms. Stick to the specific and recognizable.

For examples of well-researched, responsible sex columns see The Kinsey Confidential, a syndicated column that runs in student newspapers around the country. The column is produced by The Kinsey Institute Sexuality Information Service for Students.

Sex information sites
These sites are good sources for information and story ideas.

National Sexuality Resource Center

Society for Human Sexuality

Kinsey Institute Sexuality Information for Students

The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction

The Center for Sex Research at California State University Northridge

Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality

Alan Guttmacher Institute

Planned Parenthood Federation of America

American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists

Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States

For more information about writing a sex column see pages 50-51 of The Student Newspaper Survival Guide.