There is a foot­ball game just about every week­end from now until Thanksgiving.That means your paper (or online news site) will be devot­ing quite a bit of space and time to the ol’ pig skin.

So, we want to see your best.

Post a link to what you think is a Touch­down of a foot­ball arti­cle or col­umn and share briefly what makes it worth six points.

We’re not vot­ing and you don’t win any­thing, save for the respect of other col­lege journos and some extra hits on your site.

There’s no limit to your shar­ing. Check­ing back often is HIGHLY rec­om­mended. (as always)

Do some brag­ging, people!

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…)