For many col­lege news­pa­pers, the dead­line for get­ting pages to the printer is some­where around mid­night or just after.

When a suc­cess­fully tax­ing day of classes has come to a close, news sto­ries are com­ing in late because of less than coop­er­a­tive sources  and every­thing needs to be proofed, it can get a lit­tle hairy in the newsroom.

This is when lead­er­ship on the part of the edi­tor in chief, man­ag­ing edi­tor or sec­tion edi­tors is cru­cial. Main­tain­ing atti­tudes that reflect respon­si­ble con­cern and over­all aware­ness in the sense of the duck in the pond. (Very still above the water, but under­neath the duck’s legs are churn­ing to pro­pel the duck forward.)

Every news­room leader han­dles these sit­u­a­tions in their own way, but one com­mon­al­ity between many that I’ve spo­ken with has been “The Dead­line Song” and the eupho­ria it brings. (more…)

Let’s just say that last week was unprece­dented for us here in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Two bliz­zards, four days of can­celed classes and one destroyed out­door canopy later, things seem to be return­ing to nor­mal at Amer­i­can University.

The weather caused us to miss two print edi­tions, so the Web became cen­ter stage. (more…)

Col­lege news­pa­pers uti­liz­ing social media like Face­book and Twit­ter, or even on the newspaper’s Web site can ben­e­fit from inter­ac­tion between and with their read­ers. How­ever, as com­ment­ing, shar­ing, links and all other becomes an active part of your news orga­ni­za­tion, a pol­icy may be nec­es­sary to main­tain the integrity of the social media.

We’ve had a few inquiries about this. If your paper has a Social Media pol­icy, a resource for one or some­thing else ben­e­fi­cial, please paste it as a com­ment below, or share a link to it.