New Year in the Newsroom

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Hi! My name is Tauhid Chap­pell and I’m a stu­dent at Vir­ginia Tech. I work for Planet Blacks­burg, which is a stu­dent run, web-only, news­pa­per that “rivals” (if you can even call it that) the col­lege news­pa­per on campus.

A lot needs to be done this upcom­ing semes­ter for my orga­ni­za­tion. We’re extremely under­staffed right now but I hope that a heavy recruit­ment phase dur­ing the first cou­ple of weeks will bring in some fresh tal­ent who are eager in con­tribut­ing to our site while build­ing their elec­tronic portfolio’s.

As this fall semes­ter creeps closer, how is your news­pa­per (or online-only news­pa­per) prepar­ing for the new school year? What roles need to be filled? How are you plan­ning to recruit new writ­ers, edi­tors etc.? What are some obsta­cles, both new and old, that your orga­ni­za­tion faces? Will there be any changes that occur come fall?

Hope every­one is excited to return to their respec­tive college!

As I update our web pol­icy, I am reminded of a prob­lem that I’ve run into almost con­stantly as edi­tor of my cam­pus news­pa­per: Face­book as a dis­trac­tion from work.

I’ve con­sid­ered block­ing the site on each news­room com­puter except one, where reporters/editors could log on to use the site legit­i­mately. I really don’t want to have to do that though. I’d like to instead enforce a rule that would help curb erro­neous or aim­less use of the site, espe­cially when other work could be done. There are always press releases to be rewrit­ten and story idea sheets to be writ­ten up, etc.

Any sug­ges­tions? I’d like to encour­age respon­si­ble use of the com­put­ers rather than act­ing like a mean babysit­ter. Just for ref­er­ence, its the copyeditors/designers and edi­tors them­selves who are the biggest offenders.

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.

I attend a small lib­eral arts col­lege in the North­east. To be frank, our busi­ness man­ager is new and didn’t con­sult old appli­ca­tions for SGA fund­ing. Our EIC sub­mit­ted our appli­ca­tion two days late. We received zero fund­ing, and we need $10,000 per semes­ter in order to print. Unless we can raise that amount some­how, we have no news­pa­per. (We do have a great web­site thanks to cer­tain out­stand­ing, very enter­pris­ing peo­ple on our team. But we want a news­pa­per too. Most peo­ple would.)

So the prob­lem is less finan­cial depen­dence and more incom­pe­tence. I acknowl­edge that. At the same time, I was just elected EIC, and so I have to clean up this mess. I’m learn­ing about con­tin­gency fund­ing and deals we might make with our pub­lisher. But I was hop­ing to ben­e­fit from your advice and exper­tise. I apol­o­gize for not being able to be more spe­cific. Thanks for any and all help.

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…)

I am sick and tired of whiny reporters.

You’re in col­lege. If some­one doesn’t respond to your e-mail, call their office. Leave a few mes­sages. I am not hold­ing your hand while you cry about not get­ting a cou­ple of sources. I can tell you where to go, but I have then handed respon­si­bil­ity to you. I can help where I can, but I will not sched­ule inter­views for you.

Alter­na­tively, do what I did and go for op-ed. That way, no one cares if you inter­view some­one or not.

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

I write these things down. (more…)

For many col­lege news­pa­pers, the dead­line for get­ting pages to the printer is some­where around mid­night or just after. (more…)