The school I attend is only 5 years old and grow­ing each year with new build­ings. So, as the cam­pus grows we want to have more dis­tri­b­u­tion points on cam­pus.  We have been told by some build­ing man­agers that our news­stands are a fire haz­ard and can­not be placed in some build­ings. After doing a lit­tle research we have found that this is pretty much just an excuse to not let us place our stands in the high traf­fic areas. Also, some of our stands don’t do so well– our Din­ing Com­mons stand does ter­ri­ble; very few are taken by the time we dis­trib­ute again. So our plan is to try to get some news­stands that are blue and white, our col­ors,   with our mast head printed on it.  Also, some of our stands are not hold­ing up well only two years old and they are barely hold­ing together. What do you do for newsstands?

Thanks.

Ad Track­ing is becom­ing a pain for me. I looked into soft­ware and it is way too expen­sive for my small paper. I am an excel wiz, but for some rea­son I can’t make a tem­plate that seems to make sense to me. Any­one mind shar­ing their excel template?

Thank you!

you can email me at kellis3@ucmerced.edu

For col­lege news­pa­pers across the coun­try, the aca­d­e­mic year is wrap­ping up and in the words of the great Bob Dylan, “…the times, they are a changing.”

As edi­tors and staff move on to what­ever is next and lead­er­ship roles are filled by new peo­ple there is a pass­ing of information.

A lot of what you’ll be doing will stay the same. A lot of what you do will get bet­ter. A lot of what you do won’t be fully appre­ci­ated by your read­ers, but we the inky-fingered mem­bers of col­le­giate news­pa­pers are a unique mili­tia of infor­ma­tion. (more…)

Daunt­ing as it may seem, the time is draw­ing near when there will be a life beyond one’s col­lege news­room. (Shock­ing, I know.)

Where that life will be, what it will involve and how to start are all ques­tions young jour­nal­ists, edi­tors, design­ers, web-heads and all of the other peo­ple ded­i­cated to the news media beyond the col­lege level may ask. (more…)

With an inti­mate involve­ment in cre­at­ing a new pub­li­ca­tion, less than a year ago, one becomes increas­ingly aware of the col­lege media land­scape, espe­cially in Michi­gan (where we are). I was already an avid daily reader of Cen­tral Michi­gan Life, the State News, and the Michi­gan Daily (none of which are pub­lished at my uni­ver­sity), so I had a pretty fair grasp on col­lege media in gen­eral, the trends, the indus­try, etc. How­ever, it’s the lit­tle nuances that one doesn’t notice until he’s fully engulfed in the indus­try that I’ve been enjoy­ing, and one of those is the use and preva­lence of the term “inde­pen­dent”.
(more…)

My staff writer and I are cur­rently work­ing on a full-page Oscar spread for the upcom­ing awards. Unfor­tu­nately, we can’t seem to find a qual­ity site that has up-to-date images of the actors and/or screen shots of the movies. Does any­one know of a site where we can find the images nec­es­sary to make this page happen?

We also run into this prob­lem when writ­ing album/movie reviews. It seems like all of the sites that have images of the album artwork/movie posters are heav­ily copyrighted.

Any insight?

Rachel Harper
Edi­tor in Chief
The Lookout

The Col­lege News­room Team will be attend­ing the Michi­gan Press Asso­ci­a­tions annual con­fer­ence in Grand Rapids, Mich. on Fri­day Jan. 29.

This is a great oppor­tu­nity for the col­lege news­pa­pers of Michi­gan to pose ques­tions (as a com­ment below this post) and get answers.

Let us know what YOU want to know.

Or, if you’re going to be at the con­fer­ence, stop by our table next to the reg­is­tra­tion area.

Look­ing for­ward to meet­ing you.
(more…)

This arti­cle ran in today’s Grand Rapids Press. It was on Page B2 — in the Busi­ness sec­tion. Just a brief. We hear all about newspaper’s strug­gling as a busi­ness, but not much about things like this… (more…)

Col­lege News­room is a source for col­le­giate jour­nal­ists, edi­tors, design­ers and every­one else involved in the process of cam­pus news­pa­pers to share, cri­tique, com­mend and learn as a com­mu­nity of young peo­ple work together to make the world of col­lege news­pa­pers and beyond better.

Please, reg­is­ter to become a mem­ber and begin post­ing, shar­ing and com­ment­ing on mat­ters that are impor­tant to you.

Any ques­tions, tips or ideas, just con­tact us on the form below.