Thanks.

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.

Older and Experiecned Staffers: this is a good time to put that last little tid-bit out there for the newbies to learn.

Younger Inexperienced Staffers: this is a good time to ask some questions.

And we’re not going anywhere.

So leave your thoughts as comments to this post.

(Also, tell your staff, all of them, to sign up for College Newsroom. We’d appreciate, seeing as we’re not much without our members!)

I write these things down.

That way, I can tell everyone during our Sunday meetings what they did to incur my editorial wrath.

Because the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University is so good at what it does many of the students don’t get proper writing instruction until halfway through sophomore or the beginning of their junior year. (That’s another post entirely …)

That leaves it to me, my editors and an occasional professor, to come in on Sunday afternoons and conduct crash courses in journalism. Sometimes it’s about libel, plagiarism, profile writing, lede workshops … You name it, they need to know it, and we’ll teach it.

This week I felt it necessary to remind people what exactly a direct quote means.

One of the things I’ve really focused on this semester is giving writers feedback.

So often people dog on the Evergreen because our writers are inexperienced. This is a true but unavoidable fact at a college paper. The only thing I can do is to try to prepare my staff as well as possible so they can GAIN experience.

Posted by Dominick Bonny

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.

As Web Editor at The Eagle, I continuously monitored Twitter and Facebook for signs of any news. I was originally tipped off about the canopy story through Twitter, and we also learned about some snow-related personal injuries through the snow as well.

We asked for user-generated content on Twitter and Facebook, and got some great pictures as a result.

Our biggest news day was Wednesday, when the canopy collapsed. Our readers were hungry for updates, and we tried to provide those to them. Officials who rarely talk to us at outside of normal working hours were happy to talk to us — in the middle of a blizzard — which surprised me

I also started doing rewrites of some metro news that came from other sources. It was good to have, but the traffic did not seem to agree with me.

But in closing, my best advice is to have a Web plan going into a major news event. Know what your resources are. We were fortunate to be given some advance notice, and were also able to benefit from not having classes, but that’s not always the case. Either way, think of creating an “on duty” position — someone responsible for keeping the blogs updated, keeping the art and homepage fresh and doing rewrites. Basically a jack-of-all-trades.

And most of all have fun. Enjoy the increased traffic to your site, Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Working hard to cover a major event definitely pays off.

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.

Here is what we are already doing:

–Reporters are required to put CQs in their stories that list of the  source of info on each fact.

–Every story is edited by three line editors, then two copy editors .

–Pages are checked by top editors and copy editors.

–When mistakes are made, editors are required to fill out a form explaining the mistake and why/how it happened.

–I’ve distributed lists of my best practices for getting things right.

–I sponsored an accuracy contest called Good Save! to create a culture  that celebrates finding and fixing mistakes before they hit the paper.

–I’ve done multiple enrichments on accuracy.

–We’ve talked about taking ownership of your own work.

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

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?

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.

“If a reporter is using social media at work, I’d fire ‘em,” Maurer said during a panel on re-thinking the news at the Michigan Press Association’s conference in Grand Rapids, Mich. Jan. 29. “I’ve got a paper to put out.”

Maurer makes the point that some struggling newspapers seem to miss. The number of tweets, the quantity of facebook friends amassed and page impressions recorded are meaningless if the stories don’t mean something.

“It’s about honesty and competency,” Maurer said.

Clearly an applicable mantra to newspapers or any business, striving for excellence in your core production will garner the necessary success. Page views, re-tweets and the facebook friends are a byproduct of quality of one’s craft. College newspapers can and should focus on the same. Tweets are not how to tell the story. Tweets are how to get readers to the story.

Of course, web presence is necessary for collegiate newspapers. The students comprising the majority of the readership have grown accustomed to the web as a primary source. But, whether in print or digital, the quality of the content should be a first priority. The rest is just a delivery.

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.

**College Newsroom will be blogging live from the Michigan Press Association Conference in Grand Rapids, Mich. Check back often throughout the day and pose questions. The College Newsroom team will do our best to get the answers.**

8:55am

Check-in and general conversation abounds along with breakfast style nibblets and coffee.

9:30am

The first session has begun as more Michigan News people continue to sign in for the two day conference. MPA Foundation Board Members Dirk Milliman and Jack Batdorff stopped by, along with Adviser to the Ferris State Torch, Steve Fox. Also Wes and Mary Maurer of the St. Ignace News and the Town Crier on Mackinac Island had kind words to share.

We’re looking forward to seeing and sharing more as the day progresses.

10:00am

Colleen Dawson, the lady responsible for getting College Newsroom to the conference today, says things and they become law. Need an easel for your sign? BOOM! Her wish is granted.

Dave Clark, editor in chief of the Big Rapids Pioneer stops by to comment on the scheduled activities and the set up of College Newsroom at the conference.

1:22pm

Things are in full swing at the MPA conference and the College Newsroom table has been active and fun. Young people with college newspapers and those already established in the industry are interacting around the table. Joe Grimm of www.newsrecruiter.com and Ed Wendover, Chief of Staff for State Representative Mike Huckleberry had plenty of questions.

Whew.  Things really picked up and the rest of the updating took a second tier on the priority scale.  Here is a brief re-cap.

Spent some time in the session “Re-Thinking the News” with a panel of diverse industry professionals discussing the nature of newspapers and the changes they are encountering. Some good questions and some great answers. Check the hash tag #rethinkingthenews for tweets from the discussion.

College Newsroom gave a brief presentation to the Michigan Collegiate Press Association (MCPA) and had a sit down with Joe Grimm for a potential story on www.poynter.org

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?