I am the news edi­tor of a weekly paper, and I have the hard­est time recruit­ing writ­ers for the news section.

Last semes­ter, I had a good, solid group of about seven peo­ple I could rely on. How­ever, most of them are not writ­ing this semes­ter due to busy sched­ules, heavy class loads, etc. I have story ideas and issues that need to be inves­ti­gated and reported on,  but I have very few peo­ple will­ing to write.

How do you find writ­ers who know what they’re doing — writ­ers who do not need very much train­ing? The kind who know what a lead is, know how to use the inverted pyra­mid style? Any­one else dealt with a short­age of writers?

With an inti­mate involve­ment in cre­at­ing a new pub­li­ca­tion, less than a year ago, one becomes increas­ingly aware of the col­lege media land­scape, espe­cially in Michi­gan (where we are). I was already an avid daily reader of Cen­tral Michi­gan Life, the State News, and the Michi­gan Daily (none of which are pub­lished at my uni­ver­sity), so I had a pretty fair grasp on col­lege media in gen­eral, the trends, the indus­try, etc. How­ever, it’s the lit­tle nuances that one doesn’t notice until he’s fully engulfed in the indus­try that I’ve been enjoy­ing, and one of those is the use and preva­lence of the term “inde­pen­dent”.
(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…)

I’ll be the first to admit I’m really awful when it comes to think­ing of moti­va­tion tools. I don’t think my staff lacks moti­va­tion, but every­one could use a lit­tle extra.

That’s why I decided to spend a lit­tle time this evening Googling “staff moti­va­tion.” Noth­ing of value appeared. It was the same old stuff I’ve found in my stack of man­age­ment books.

But, I finally found some­thing that will hope­fully pro­vide some good insight. I went to Poyn­ter and searched “moti­va­tion.” I found a “Work Sat­is­fac­tion Sur­vey” posted by Jill Geisler.
(more…)

What if you have a really strong News Edi­tor (or any other lead­er­ship posi­tion for that mat­ter) who is offered a posi­tion at a pro­fes­sional paper or a great intern­ship and lit­er­ally has to leave one day? Do you bite your tongue and cel­e­brate the suc­cess as a stu­dent news­pa­per? Do you crit­i­cize the per­son for not giv­ing more notice and bail­ing out on a year– or semester-long com­mit­ment? How does a stu­dent news­pa­per — small or large — deal with such changes? It is the nature of the beast to have a staff some­what in flux.

As can often be the case at many news­pa­pers, the rela­tion­ship between Edi­tors and other staff can become strained when sug­ges­tions meant to improve the con­tent cause an indi­vid­ual to feel antagonized.

Per­son­ally, I’ve always found that wrap­ping a cri­tique in a com­pli­ment is the best deliv­ery system.

Blue= Com­pli­ment

Red= Crit­i­cism

“Your head­line was great. I think the story needed a lot of work. There are sev­eral places where you can improve it. The idea is good though.  I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing the next draft.”

Of course it is pos­si­ble that the recip­i­ent may still be some­what indig­nant.  By nature, some just don’t respond well.

What do you do when you need to cor­rect a per­son with whom you work?

How do you give criticism?

If they  don’t respond well to the crit­i­cism… what do you do?  How should one smooth things over?

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.