Our col­lege news­pa­per has the good for­tune of get­ting a new news­room built this sum­mer.  It’s not a huge space–about 19 x 13 feet–but we can fur­nish it from scratch.  We have some plans, though I’m won­der­ing what we haven’t thought of.  What are the most use­ful ele­ments in your newsroom–anything from fur­ni­ture to elec­tron­ics to stor­age to things on the walls?  Thanks in advance.

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…)

My paper, The Free Press, is con­sid­er­ing mov­ing from tabloid to broadsheet.

I per­son­ally like the feel, look, and flex­i­bil­ity of design­ing broad­sheet pages. But we’re also really under­staffed, and have just enough con­tent to print a 20 page tabloid weekly.

Has any­body moved from tabloid to broad­sheet? What were some prob­lems you encoun­tered? How did you change ad rates? Was it worth it?

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…)

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.