Handling tragedies on campus

No one wants to be responsible for informing the student body of a death. At most schools, such things are handled through administration or counseling offices of some kind.

Many school papers avoid reporting deaths -- no obituaries, limited coverage, etc -- usually citing ethical issues. But you cannot simply pick and choose the news. Student newspapers have an equal responsibility to report tragedies as the professional media outlets.

There is no denying, however, the necessity of handling these situations delicately. Many schools' administration argue that any case of suicide should simply not be reported through campus media, due to copy cat concerns. They also try to limit coverage of violent crimes, fearing for the school's reputation, as well as some illnesses.

A good newspaper can report on these cases without bias, however, and can provide valuable information about limiting the chances of further tragedy. In a situation involving suicide, a newspaper staff can take a proactive position and direct students towards counseling and other help. If there is a legitimate concern, such as illness or crime, a newspaper can inform students of precautions to take.

Finally, if a member of a campus' community dies, the community has the right to acknowledge it. Even a simple obituary can help with the grieving process.

Your Bible and Mine

I've used an AP Stylebook as a pillow more than once, at least partially in hopes of getting just a few more minutia down through osmosis. Most editors live and breath AP style, as it should be.

But, an AP style guide isn't enough to keep your paper consistent -- which is the goal of AP style. You need to make your own additions.

What all should be in your personal style guide?

• Names of important people on campus (i.e. officials, student government leaders, athletes) with double checked spelling, as well as their correct titles.
  
• Correct names for campus buildings, along with acceptable nicknames. If your student union is known across campus as the "U", make sure you establish a style for it that students will recognize.
• Any deviations from AP style that you regularly use. For instance, if you capitalize "the" in the name of your university, you should note it to make sure you are consistent.
• Organization-specific terminology that some writers may find unfamiliar, such as terms dealing with Greek organizations (fraternities and sororities).

It can be expensive to replace style guides every time the Associated Press issues a new one, so a lot of student newsrooms use older style guides. You may want to include notes about updates in any local style guide that you develop. It's perfectly alright to continue using older manuals as is, however: as long as your newspaper's style is consistent, your readership isn't going to care one bit.

Fact sheets can also be useful to have around. Lists of information about certain facets of school life, such as student body statistics, can speed up your fact checking process.

Farming out your comics section?

Some papers chose not to run any comic strips, or puzzles, or anything 'fun', although it seems like an easy way to draw in readers -- Johnny may grab his friend in microeconomics and say "Read this strip!" or "What's 10-down?", but he'll never ask, "Did you see that review of the cafeteria?" It's up to you, though; it's your paper. If you aren't, though, you won't find this post very interesting.

There are thousands of comic strips out on the vast internet, whose creators would love the exposure of even a student newspaper. But are they valuable to your paper? Their value boils down to how much of a local paper you are trying to create. It's easy to convince an art student on campus to draw a comic, or even make one yourself (there are several comic strip generators online, even -- all you have to do is upload a photo or two). It's just as easy to get puzzles or humor columns.

It's not ridiculous to look outside your community for these things, though. You may be able to find a more dependable or humorous source online. Some will charge, some will be work for exposure alone. It all boils down to how much of your paper you want to come from students at your school.

The Class of 2011

Every year, Beloit College publishes a list of points to keep in mind about the world view of new students. The original intention of the list was to aid instructors in relating to their students, but it is now an annual event for national newspapers. USA Today published the list last week.

Any item on this list is an opportunity for an op-ed piece or an interview with an instructor. Heck, what about the differences between this year's freshmen and this year's senior class? Those four years make the difference of whether a person might personally remember the fall of the Berlin Wall!

A list like this is also an opportunity to consider your paper's demographics. What's popular with the 'new kids'? And what doesn't matter?

Definition: Fourth Estate

The Fourth Estate refers directly to journalists. The term comes from the idea of the three estates of the Ancien Regime: the First Estate is the clergy, the Second the nobles and the Third the commoners. The Fourth Estate is responsible for advocating the needs of the other three estates, as well as framing issues so that each estate can understand them.

There is a quasi-mythical attribution of the term to Edmund Burke, which Jeffrey Archer summed up in his novel, The Fourth Estate:

In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the Estate General. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.'

Gearin' Up For Game Time

This is the time that most student papers are starting publication for the year. You may be doing desperate last minute searches for writer, photographers or even editors. You may be trying to learn about the production side of your paper on the side, or figure out just how distribution is going to happen.

Every issue of a newspaper is a small miracle -- but it is a repeatable miracle. You can get this done, I promise. Good luck, kids, but I don't think you'll need it.

The Fine Points of Ethics

On Aug. 19, the New York Times ran a question an ethics question from an intern at a national magazine:

My editor asked me to post comments on one of the magazine’s online blogs, being sure not to mention my working for the magazine but to write in a style that suggests I’m a reader.

The internet and its associated blogs and forums have forced good journalists to voluntarily disclose their associations. But what constitutes disclosure?

This intern did not mention the name of the magazine he interned at, but he signed his name to his question. Google tells us immediately that he worked for Tennis Magazine. Does the fact that it’s so easy to find out his associations count as disclosure?

What about student newspapers? With the absolutely incestuous nature of student organizations – especially at small schools, it isn’t unheard of for a writer to also be part of student government, Greek life and various other organizations.

It simply isn’t practical, at least in a print publication, to add a writer’s associations to every story, but the magic of the internet is that it’s amazingly easy disclose things online. If your newspaper maintains a website, why not post profiles of individual writers and editors? If that’s too much effort, why not make sure that your writers have up to date Facebook profiles?