Where are you getting your news from?

I read the news every day. By the news, I don’t mean just skimming a local paper. I get headlines every day from three major newspapers delivered by RSS feeds. I get e-mail newsletters on every imaginable subject. I read blogs and websites.

It takes me at least an hour to get up to date. I’m an extremist, although I’m willing to claim it’s very worthwhile. However, I’m not evangelical to expect all of this from you.

On the other hand, I can’t see why any newspaper editor or reporter doesn’t take the time to check out a couple of specific pieces of information every morning.

Google Alerts: Why not let Google tell you whenever somebody writes something about your school? I actually got clued into a story on campus before the administration knew about it because of Google. Put your school’s name in quotes, as well as important figures on campus – you’ll always be surprised what turns up on figures in administration.

Your alumni magazine: I’ve seen alumni magazines swipe stories from the student paper more than once. It’s once a month and at a lot of schools you can get it online.

Your local daily: Given that I think you should read a copy cover to cover, I understand most people have no inclination. But take the time to run over the local headlines online, at least. You never know what kinds of stories will pop up in your neighborhood, and most locals will still keep you up to date on national news.

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Call me a nerd, but seriously – I have gotten some amazing leads out of this magazine.

I’ve got a huge long list of further recommendations, but I won’t make you suffer. Think about it, though – what’s your best source for news about your school?

The Ongoing Student Loan Crisis

Yesterday's NY Times ran an article about the continuing issues with student loan providers. The Government Accountability Office's recent report on the Department of Education's failure to prevent wrongdoing by lenders.

This is a story on the national news that directly affects college students. But how many college students even know that this is an issue? Certainly most college newspapers aren't covering it.

It's not an issue of lack of information -- it's covered in national newspapers. It seems more likely to be a question that student editors don't know how to cover the issue. Most of them can't afford to send a reporter on down to D.C. for a couple of interviews at the GAO.

But why not call the GAO's public relations office and ask them to email a copy of their press releases? After all, I can't imagine there is a college student with absolutely no access to a cell phone with free long distance and email -- even a friend's.

Sale of Dow Jones Finalized

Today, the sale of Dow Jones & Company to News Corp. was finalized.

Why the heck should college students care?

Let's set aside all discussion of post-college life and any vague hope you may have of getting a job in a good newsroom. There's plenty of other meat on this particular bone.

Right now, a lot of questions are being asked about whether newspapers can exist outside of media conglomerates. The party line claims that this is not an issue for college newspapers, but there are a few papers that have been bought up.

Student papers are extra tasty for media conglomerates:

1. There's a guaranteed audience, with a very specific demographic. It's very easy to sell advertising for such a specific market.
2. There's a cheap staff that won't need relocating, training, raises, etc. They're even excited about the opportunity. And after graduation, they can be funneled into other media properties for relatively low costs.
3. It looks good that a media conglomerate has an interest in up-and-coming journalists.

It can be a beneficial arrangement for newspapers too -- independent college papers spend a lot of time worrying about money and newspapers supported by colleges or universities have an inherent bias issue.

P.S. The Wall Street Journal has also been a bastion of good journalism in the past -- will Rupert Murdoch keep up the high standards? Today, journalists aspire to the WSJ's standards. Will they still be setting benchmarks for the rest of us? Or will they fall in line with Murdoch's conservative slant?

I need wire!

With the upcoming demise of asap (the AP's wire service for it's youth markets), it seems that we need to take a step back and think about exactly what college journalists need from a wire service.

At the ideal college paper, students create all the content for one of those worthwhile learning experiences that we hear all about. This means that theoretically, a college newspaper should have no need for a wire service.

But theory isn't practice. A college newspaper doesn't have the staff or budget to cover national issues, even if they are hugely relevant to campus life. There are plenty of topics that make the idea of a wire service useful. And if we circle back around to that whole learning experience idea: if you're planning to go into journalism as a career, you're going to need a concept of how a wire service works.

An added bonus is the idea that a newspaper might be able to at least earn back their wire expenditures with the value of their own material.

In the end, the real question is how to keep a college wire service functioning.

Link: Most US Teens, Young Adults Don't Follow The News Closely

Editor and Publisher

Among Americans aged 18 to 30, researchers found that 48 percent said they are “inattentive” to daily news. Comparatively, only 23 percent of older Americans said the same.

Link: A New Branded Journalism

Chicago Reader:

John Lavine, the founding director of Medill’s profit-making Media Management Center, was named dean of Medill in late 2005 with instructions to turn the school upside down. The IMC curriculum had already been overhauled, and Lavine has left it pretty much alone. But the journalism side is being rewritten in a way that’s made a lot of the faculty feel disdained, as if Lavine thinks their heads are in the past and his is in the future.

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