This Week in CoPress: Albert Sun and developing 34st.com
Welcome to the second podcast from CoPress. Each week, we’re going to be talking with student journalists, professional journalists, and others about technology, innovation, college media, and the way forward.
This week, Albert Sun, web editor for the Daily Pennsylvanian, talks about developing the new entertainment magazine web site 34st.com using Drupal.
Three of the plug-ins Albert metioned in the podcast:
Have a topic you think we should cover in our next interview? Leave us a note in the comments!
Support the school paper or compete with it? I was asked to weigh in…
Hmmm…a competitor to the student newspaper. As I’m sure you know now is a very interesting time for newsrooms across the country both professionally and at the educational level. Technology is making so many new and wonderful things possible from news delivery services, to content management, to multimedia capabilities, etc while business departments are struggling to figure it all out and make money to keep print editions alive and control their own publications.
At the collegiate level I have to believe that supporting the school newspaper is extremely important especially if it is an independent. From the hundreds of online editions that I have perused I have found that many have begun incorporating new voices and other student media outlets. I believe that joining forces is really the best option and breaking away should only be a last resort.
We’re talking about students, who for the most part can’t commit to much and for a publication to succeed on it’s own it needs a long term commitment by a core group of individuals. To find that is very hard. I have seen it before where a few disenfranchised students break away from the school newspaper to start an alternative or new voice for their student body and it either dissolves about a semester before they graduate or they quickly learn that they are over their heads or they lost that zealousness after the introductory hype has faded.
There is something to be said for the many years that the college papers have been in existence.
Would love to hear what the leading student journalists have to say on this subject.
Would you be for a “bailout” then of student newspapers, Ben?
I think I’d be down to hear this topic debated.
I prefer to not see it as competition. As far as I’m concerned the more voices on campus the better. News organizations need to stop seeing themselves as the only people in a community who can report on what’s going on. That attitude is condescending, and is a large part of why the industry is suffering right now.
Having said that, I think it would be exceedingly wise for student news organizations to realize this, and capitalize on it. My plan for the social network aspect of Populous (www.populousproject.com) is to do exactly this. We’re going to give everyone on campus the tools we develop for the Daily Bruin, right on our network.
Everyone on campus will be able to create a blog, or even a full blown news site, but it will be on our network and hosted by us. People get the added benefit of our brand and readership, and we get the benefit of vastly increased (we hope) traffic to our site. The goal is for people to see us as a more relevant and inclusive news organization — giving people the tools they need to organize themselves and cover their own niche.
We’re hoping to use this model as an experiment for the future of news distribution. Doing traditional reporting at the Bruin, and giving the readers the tools they need to cover their community the way they see it. We’ll be a news organization with more information, more news, more ideas, and more stories.
What would be bad is if college media didn’t try new things or adapt. Even the papers which are supported largely by their campuses will fade away when they become irrelevant. So I’m not sure I buy the idea that college papers should be supported at all costs. Let’s please put some fire under their feet!
Anthony Pesce
Editor in Chief, UCLA Daily Bruin
Director, Populous
I’d say support it and work with it unless there’s simply no other option.
As Ben said, the problem with anything student-driven is that students are generally inherently time-limited. Unless there’s a really strong group behind the new venture who at the same time are working very hard to recruit and prepare their own successors, quick dissolution is quite likely.
Part of the glue that holds an organization together is established tradition, and establishing tradition takes time.
[...] Also, check out a string of interesting comments on the Copress blog about competition in college media. I threw in my $.02 and so should you (the podcast is also interesting): http://www.copress.org/2008/12/this-week-in-copress-albert-sun-and-developing-34stcom/ [...]
[...] This Week in CoPress: Albert Sun and developing 34st.com My second podcast as "host" of the CoPress podcast. (tags: podcast copress) [...]
I was on #journchat tonight and I managed to get one comment out there while everyone was debating on stupid things like the definition of a blogger versus a journalist, whereas I believe the big issue of journalism right now is how do we make money so that people can report for a living and deliver content that people desire.
The financial problem of the business of journalism is due to the speed at which invention and innovation is moving. It moves faster than businesses can learn and adapt to. We are also seeing a paradigm shift away from advertising (which has been the lifeblood of the traditional model) with the advent of social media. Smart companies are putting more emphasis on developing better products and then creating and fostering communities that enjoy.
So because of technology and the affordability of things like camera phones, blogging software, editing software, etc. available to people, anyone can now create content. My #journchat comment was: The key is to now 1. Aggregate this entire content, 2. Sort it and put it into a meaningful (valuable) context and narrative and 3. Monetize it
Anthony’s plan sounds like it is on the right path…Let’s get everyone who likes to have their voice heard on campus together and in one place (aggregate). Once he has done that they now need to do step 2-organize it and place it within a meaningful context and narrative. So how do we make this sustainable aka make money if traditional advertising is just not gonna cut it? The papers need to think of creative and effective ways to harness the means of communication of your student body. The answers are there, just look around you.
Do I support a bailout of student newspapers?
I would support a bailout contingent upon a plan for sustainable growth, and those who should bailout the student newspapers, if need be, should be the universities and colleges. I think we have already seen this happen at a few campuses.
follow me on twitter @benleis
I think the biggest problem I have with bailing anyone out at this point is that newspapers, student and regional, have had the last 20 years to transition their business model. Just like the American auto industry. Bailing them out at this point is to save them from the free market, and not going to force the innovation that’s necessary. You can’t regulate businesses into innovation, imho.
@daniel
That is why I said the bailout, if dire, would have to be contingent upon a long term sustainable plan. One with a very sound revenue plan. How many times over the next 3 years do you think you will be changing online platforms? There seems to be an ebb and flow going on with these platform companies.
@Ben
There won’t be a long term, sustainable business plan for news, however. I think that’s one paradigm that hasn’t really been addressed yet, that the newspaper is a largely static format, but the internet is not. Funding private ventures, let it be newspapers or the auto industry, because they fail to adapt/innovate when is not a long term solution.