Like their mainstream peers, college newsrooms migrating to a digital present and future

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1 Like their mainstream peers, college newsrooms migrating to a digital present and future By Michael Anderson Bulletin Staff Within the past 10 years, colleges across New England have made significant changes to their studentrun publications. Gone are the days of students writing, preparing and waiting for stories to go into the print edition. Recent trends in student publications reflect the changes that mainstream newspapers are making or have made. The increasing use of social media has meant that stories can be posted online in a matter of minutes, reaching various online communities. Today, students are still reporting on events and editing stories, but they no longer have to wait to see them printed. One common theme among newspaper staffs interviewed by the Bulletin was that their publications are all online, and each used social media as a means to help get news out to their community and readers. Some staffs have even developed mobile applications, which readers can download onto their smartphones so they can read the newspaper on the go. The Bulletin interviewed nine editors in chief of college newspapers throughout New England. The nine colleges are Colby College in Waterville, Maine, Emerson College in Boston, Providence (R.I.) College, Salem (Mass.) State University, the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the University of Hartford in Connecticut, the University of Maine in Orono, the University of New Hampshire in Durham, and the University of Vermont in Burlington. Two of those student-run websites, for The Berkeley Beacon at Emerson College and The Vermont Cynic at the University of Vermont, stand out for being tech-savvy. We have the first college website design in the country that will adapt to different layouts and devices, said Heidi Moeller, editor in chief of the Berkeley Beacon. Moeller said Ryan Catalani, an Emerson student and design director of the Berkeley Beacon, built and designed the site from scratch. The website is HTML5 and completely custom-made, Moeller said. All video is HTML5 too, not Flash, so it can be viewed on devices such as ipads and iphones. HTML is a computer language code, which formats structure and certain content for a website. HTML5 is an updated version of HTML, which allows integration of video, audio and graphic content without the user having to download a program to view it.

2 The Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University featured a story in April 2012 on the work Catalani did with the website. The Nieman lab publishes stories on its website, focusing on journalism, the changes it s facing and trends of where it s going. Like the Beacon, the Vermont Cynic now focuses more on online journalism. Brett Summers, former editor in chief of the weekly Vermont Cynic, said the newspaper has been online since 2002, but within the past 10 years, it has evolved. In the last two years, we ve focused on multimedia, as well as structuring and organizing the website, Summers said. We also post breaking news stories online too. As a weekly paper, we ve evolved and adapted to putting stories online. If there s ever any type of breaking news, we ve been able to break it onto our website. Summers said the improvements on the website gained the Vermont Cynic a National Pacemaker Award for its website. Pacemaker awards are issued annually by the Associated Collegiate Press, and it s the highest award a college newspaper can earn. It is the oldest and largest national membership organization for college student journalists, according to the Associated Collegiate Press. The Associated Collegiate Press assists students to improve their publications, by offering them resources such as press credentials, networking opportunities, and critiques of their publications. Besides having websites, all the college newspapers contacted have a presence on social media, most commonly Facebook and Twitter. Some schools have experimented with blogs, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest. The social media sites are popular among publishers and users, both professional and student-run. Facebook, the world s largest networking site, is used for publishing and sharing stories. Twitter is used to interact with an online community whose members can easily retweet their content. Instagram is a photosharing site in which users can take pictures and share them with other Instagram users. Tumblr allows users to post multimedia and other interactive content to form a blog. On Pinterest, people can pin photos or videos of interest to their pinboard. Justin Doubleday, editor in chief for the twice-weekly publication, The New Hampshire, at the University of New Hampshire, said the staff there relies on social media quite a bit. He said that s what students are using, and is the best way to keep in touch with them. We have a Twitter account with over 4,500 followers, and a Facebook page with over 1,200 likes, he said. With Twitter we can link our stories to Facebook and live-tweet. While on Facebook, which we use two to three times a week, we find it s a good place to upload photos and story links to our online site. Doubleday said he hopes to add more social media besides Facebook and Twitter, such as Pinterest and Instagram, before he graduates in the spring. Catalani, design director for the Berkeley Beacon, said social media plays an important role in getting news to students at Emerson College. Facebook, Twitter, Storify, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram are all used regularly, Catalani said. When it comes to Twitter, we write a short headline and post links of stories from our website. We also use Tumblr to post photos.

3 Catalani said the staff uses Facebook to post stories from the print edition, while Storify is used for social media roundups and Emersonrelated tweets. As an example, the Beacon posted Emerson-related tweets to form a Storify about President Obama endorsing gay marriage. The use of Storify to cover current events is increasing because it can incorporate an online presence from several voices. The website allows users to take content from the Web and social media sites, from professionals or amateurs. Websites such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr are sourced to form a story that summarizes an event such as Hurricane Sandy. It produces a page of stories, images and video that is constantly updating. The Berkeley Beacon also has been adding multimedia to its digital technology tools. We recently added The Berkeley Beat, which is a five-minute video that we produce which summarizes the week s stories, Moeller said. Summers said of the Vermont Cynic s following on social media: Right now we have over 2,000 followers on Twitter, and over 400 likes on Facebook. We use both Facebook and Twitter to break news as well as ask readers for their opinions. The Colby Echo, a weekly publication at Colby College, uses The Colby Blog on its website to keep students up to date. We try and update our blog regularly, and we use it to list fun things to do for the weekend as well as post some stories, said Sarah Lyon, editor in chief for The Colby Echo. The Daily Campus at the University of Connecticut, unlike the other student newspapers surveyed, is published in print five days a week. The Campus uses social media every day in conjunction with its print edition. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are what we use, said Elizabeth Crowley, editor in chief of the Daily Campus. Links to all of our stories are updated on Twitter every day. Announcements, events, and meetings are put on Twitter as well. Facebook allows us to promote ourselves, post events, and break news. If we have a breaking news story at 1 p.m., we can upload the story link to Facebook right away. Crowley said Instagram is used by her photo department on a regular basis. If they see anything cool or exciting, they ll use their discretion, take a picture and post it on Instagram and Twitter, she said. Jesse Scardina, editor in chief of The Maine Campus, a weekly at the University of Maine, said Twitter is valuable to live-tweet events. I used live tweets for sports, Scardina said. I once had a reporter live-tweet a concert. It just works well with scheduled events.

4 Not only are college publications expanding online, but some offer a free downloadable mobile application that readers can use to see the student newspapers content on a smartphone or tablet. In fact, the Daily Campus at UConn is one of the only colleges in New England that has a regularly used mobile application based solely on the newspaper. The mobile app is available on Android and iphone devices, Crowley said. Content from the newspaper is uploaded and updated regularly. Businesses also advertise on the app too. Summers said the Vermont Cynic has one, but it isn t used that much. We do have a mobile app, but it s underutilized right now, he said. It s basic, and for it to become more functional, the school will have to find someone who knows how to work with apps so it ll become more useful. Charles Paullin said he wants to amp up the website for The Informer, a weekly newspaper at the University of Hartford. I want to see more video intertwined with Facebook and Twitter, said Paullin, who is editor in chief of the Informer. When it comes to social media, I ve been trying to implement Storify, which we could use to live-blog events, especially for sports. Paullin said it s important for the school s newspaper to go mobile. He hopes that ll happen before the end of the year. For the Salem State Log, a newspaper published every other week at Salem State University, the focus for the future will be getting more content online. Our goal for now (is) to keep updating the website with more content and to get involved with social media a lot more than we have, said Hope Hunt, editor in chief of the Log. At Providence College, The Cowl, a weekly, might become a newspaper that focuses solely on in-depth stories. Arman Oganisian, editor in chief for the Cowl, gave as an example of that type of in-depth story one the Cowl did on why student-athletes were getting free Apple MacBooks while the rest of the student population wasn t getting them. I want to get the paper to be more graphics-intensive and to focus more on (in-depth) articles, Oganisian said. Breaking news and staying current is impossible because we re a weekly publication. So focusing on in-depth, analysis-based stories makes sense. Oganisian said he wants the Cowl to have more pictures to go along with in-depth stories. Oganisian said he thinks that because the newspaper is published once a week, news stories just become irrelevant and less interesting. But expanding on stories such as athletes receiving free MacBooks will interest readers more, he said. All the editors interviewed agreed that a heavy digital presence is the direction student publications have to go in as they move forward. The combination of a functional website and interaction with social media sites now appears to be required. The success of smartphones has also come into the fore, with many requiring mobile-friendly websites or applications.

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