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.

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…)

All week, while edit­ing at The Daily Ever­green, I see things that grind my gears.

I write these things down. (more…)

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

This was recently posted, in a longer ver­sion, on a list­serv. Any ideas:

This year, we have seen a pre­cip­i­tous decline in our accu­racy  stan­dards. Hardly a day goes by with­out a cor­rec­tion or three.

Part of it, I think, is that it’s never been eas­ier for read­ers and  sources to point out our mis­takes. I think other fac­tors include  edi­tors who are too busy mul­ti­task­ing to really think crit­i­cally  dur­ing the edit­ing process, writ­ers who are dis­en­gaged, sto­ries that come in too close to dead­line for good vet­ting and poten­tially, a process with so many fail-safes that no one takes own­er­ship. (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

If a stu­dent news­pa­per has restric­tions on adver­tis­ing tobacco or smok­ing prod­ucts, what do you do with a hookah bar? Is that the same thing or some­thing totally different?

I must admit, I’ve never entered a hookah bar. I don’t know what they’re all about. I just won­der how they fit into the equa­tion and what stu­dent news­pa­pers are doing about ads from places like hookah bars.

Does the need for increased ad rev­enue in tough eco­nomic times out­weigh the moral stan­dards the paper would like to uphold? Does the econ­omy make it nec­es­sary for stu­dent papers to review and maybe change old adver­tis­ing reg­u­la­tions to help increase rev­enue, regard­ing things like alco­hol and tobacco? Real­ity is these com­pa­nies are often get­ting rich off the money from stu­dents on your cam­pus; why not get some money from those wealthy companies?

When Wes Mau­rer gets asked what will save news­pa­pers, his sim­pli­fied response is good writ­ing and good journalism.

Mau­rer, the pub­lisher and edi­tor of the St. Ignace News in St. Ignace, Mich. and the Mack­inac Island Town Crier, rep­re­sents an old school style of news­pa­per jour­nal­ism that isn’t focused on tweets and web prowess, but more so the con­tent that fills the space between the reader’s thumbs as they hold the paper in front of their face. (more…)

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…)

Should you use the “N” word?

If your news­pa­per is run­ning a story regard­ing a topic that involves racial slurs (an art exhibit, guest speaker, book release, MLK week) and the “N” word is used, do you print the word in its entirety? Would it be dam­ag­ing to the con­text of the story to replace some let­ters with asterisks?

What if it’s a quote? Main­tain­ing the integrity of a quote is impor­tant in sto­ries, but at the sake of say­ing some­thing that could be dam­ag­ing to the newspaper’s integrity.

Should the race of the reporter mat­ter?
(more…)