Convergence makes headlines for collegiate publications
By Anthony Pesce
Jan. 22, 2008 9:27 p.m.
When a group of students at Duke upended a football goal post and inadvertently dropped it on another student’s head, the campus newspaper was not there taking pictures.
Instead, the Duke Chronicle relied on a passerby with a camera to send them images of what happened to post on their Web site ““ alongside a story written by a newspaper staffer.
And when the Chico State Orion wanted to show its readers where the local bike trails were, it used an interactive online flash graphic, rather than a more traditional print map.
Newspapers everywhere are implementing a host of new practices and policies to adapt to the increasingly fast-paced, cell phone camera-saturated, Web 2.0 world.
Some of those policies involve taking content from the community to bolster that of the newspaper, much like what The Chronicle did with the goal post incident. Professional papers such as the Los Angeles Times have even begun to ask for, and prominently display, photos taken by readers.
College and professional newspapers have seen their print circulations decline significantly in recent years. As a result, newsrooms across the country, including a small group of collegiate publications, are trying “convergence” ““ the incorporation of other forms of media into a traditional newsroom environment.
Looking to the future
Industry insiders agree that newspapers are behind the times when it comes to embracing new Web technology, and professional papers everywhere are now looking for young, bright students to help them see the light.
Student-run papers like The Chronicle and The Orion ““ and even the Daily Bruin ““ are furiously working to educate their student journalists in “new media” including blogs, flash and video so they can compete in the job market.
“We were seeing all of the dire predictions about the future: We have to go online, do multimedia, blog, do video,” said The Chronicle’s Editor-in-Chief David Graham. “Those who are interested in journalism as a career realized we had to be pragmatic and be aware of this.”
Many student editors, like Graham, find it difficult to predict what types of media newspapers will be taking advantage of even 10 years into the future. But many of the more established student publications are doing everything they can to experiment with newer forms of media.
Jason Brummond, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Iowan at the University of Iowa, said his paper is working on a project to buy several handheld video cameras and train all of their reporters to use them in the field.
“We’re going to have the whole newsroom ““ 60 to 80 people ““ trained with small handheld cameras,” he said. “Our staff members are going to have those skills.”
Brummond said he thinks the paper and its readers benefit equally from the new technology because readers get to experience stories from different angles.
“The one thing is presenting the story in different ways,” he said. “Our readers can come online and look at an audio slideshow and look at video (football) game highlights. It’s like one-stop shopping.”
But there is another layer to this trend ““ deeper than the pressing need to have valuable job skills, or even to keep the attention of student readers.
Incorporating video
If the future of the newspaper involves embracing video and other multimedia content, some say papers like the Daily Iowan and the Daily Bruin are at the forefront.
Both The Iowan and The Bruin have brought campus television stations into the newsroom fold, and both projects have had their successes and challenges.
The editors of both papers said the primary challenge in integrating a television station into a newsroom environment is the additional collaboration and teamwork required.
“The hardest thing has been getting people to work together,” Brummond said. “In newspapers, people have identified themselves as a print journalist or a broadcast journalist. … The biggest challenge is getting those people to work on the same story, go out together and cover an event.”
Saba Riazati, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Bruin, echoed those concerns: “The production process for television is different from that of print. … Making sure to coordinate Daily Bruin Television coverage with print is difficult because all of our journalists have to consider another section in their planning.”
Brummond said his newsroom has largely overcome these difficulties, and the Iowan even won a prestigious award for its team coverage of a tornado that struck near the campus.
“Everyone was pitching together during this huge news story. We had teams of a reporter, photographer and cameraperson together heading out to cover certain areas,” he said.
But not all video content needs to come from a campus television station.
The staff of The Orion rents video equipment from another campus department, and will soon have cameras of their own, said The Orion’s Online Editor Chelsea Accursi.
She also said that, contrary to the efforts of The Bruin and The Iowan, students do not want to see another student on camera delivering the news ““ the traditional practice in television journalism.
“When we started I wanted to be very clear that there isn’t a journalist in front of the camera. That’s TV journalism,” she said, highlighting the distinction between the two traditionally separate industries.
Whether combining the arts of television journalism and its print counterpart, or simply giving regular reporters cameras and sending them off into the field ““ these publications seem to be preparing for something greater.
An end to newsprint
Predictions have been circulating for years that within a few decades printed newspapers will be obsolete. The only questions that remain are when it will happen and what forms the newspapers of the future will take.
“It’s been predicted that the print medium for newspapers is becoming obsolete,” Riazati said. “Because of this we have begun to exhaust every option to popularize and improve our Web page.”
Accursi said she believes the future of college newspapers ““ and likely professional ones as well ““ is user involvement, interactivity and multimedia.
“It will be more interactive, people will post their own videos, there will be forums. … That’s where newspapers will have to go,” Accursi said.
“Eventually I would like to think that Chico students will have The Orion as their home page … and it would be one big student community.”
With the future of newspapers lying in a well-designed Web page, flashy multimedia content and user interactivity, college publications are beginning to struggle with the reality of developing the means to display this content.
The Orion, Chronicle and Daily Iowan all use a Web platform called College Publisher that provides free Web space in exchange for the right to sell online advertising content.
The site allows for easy photo slideshows, but videos tend to be slow and cumbersome to play, Accursi said.
Some papers upload their video content to YouTube and embed the clips on their sites, and others create a whole new site ““ outside of the College Publisher network ““ to post their multimedia content.
Accursi said that in the future she hopes The Orion can be off the College Publisher server and stand on its own so it can better develop Web content.
But until the newsprint vanishes completely, Graham questions multimedia’s utility to the average student reader.
“I question the benefit to our core audience of undergraduate students on campus,” he said. “Most students live on campus, and most pick up a print edition.”
