Home > Courses > JEM 560 Advanced Web Publishing > Amanda Wills: Research paper
Student News Online:
Foundations, Formats and Future
By Amanda Wills
(Class presentation: Nov. 5, 2008)
In 1990 Channel One Network debuted in American classrooms. The simple newscast format featured stories geared toward teens and aimed at sparking debate and discussion on important issues. While Channel One covered domestic and international issues, it was influential in the classroom because it found its niche in a younger audience that had previously lacked representation in the media. Channel One found a common thread in top news stories that linked together teens around the nation. The program started a trend in using media and technology as a teaching method in the classroom. 1
Channel One is an early example of content sharing between educational networks. It’s important to note when researching student news sites because Channel One’s idea of student-driven content influenced future student media. 2 As the Internet evolved and grew in popularity, this same idea of student-driven news and participation became a popular theme when building student news Web sites.
The first wave of news sites was mostly content reprinted from an already established student newspaper. The Web sites were in basic HTML format with few external links. Once the Internet became a clear news source and traffic became heavier, student publications began taking notice of more complex designs using programs like Adobe Flash Player and JavaScript.3
Today the majority of student print publications have online content as well. In addition, universities are investing in news publications specifically designed for the Web. A survey by Student Monitor found that while students watch an average of 10 hours of television weekly, they spend an average of 15 hours a week online.4 Since there is an unlimited amount of space, and the Internet is time-sensitive, news organizations have embraced the idea of featuring its best writers, photographers and designers.
While each student Web site has a unique design, there’s a general trend in formatting and content management systems, or CMS. Hundreds of student news sites use College Publisher and WordPress, but others have found the design too structured, leaving little room for individuality. As a result, several publications have invested in individual in-house designs and CMS.
College Publisher
Kai Pradel, Karstan Robbins and Jon Block developed Emerson’s Berkeley Beacon online in 1999. The content management system was designed specifically for the college newsroom and evolved into College Publisher. After Syracuse’s Daily Orange, Ohio State’s The Lantern and University of Connecticut’s Daily Campus adopted the College Publisher system in 2001, its popularity grew, and in 2002 Y2M: Youth Media & Marketing Networks acquired the Boston-based company.5
College Media Network owns College Publisher and is part of mtvU college television network. College Publisher supplies its members at no charge with its publishing platform specially created for campus newsrooms. College Publisher’s format allows for three advertising spots, and the student publication keeps 100 percent of its advertising revenue.6 In fall 2008, College Publisher launched its newest publishing software, CP5. CP5 is a java-based platform built through Polopoly, a content management system tool for all digital channels. According to its Web site, the new version will “enable editors and journalists to update the site with an easy-to-use GUI (Graphical User Interface).”7
One of College Publisher’s advantages is its link to MTV and all brands related to the network. This allows for small college news Web sites to carry advertisement from national chains and other big-ticket companies. College Publisher claims it is an easy-to-use system that takes the guesswork out of Web design, allowing smaller publications to migrate to the Internet.
“There’s no more local paper than a campus paper,” Y2M General Manager Dina Pradel tells the Baltimore Sun. She says the average campus audience is “a very attractive demographic” because these members are more likely to spend over $1 million in goods or services over a lifetime. Additionally, many college students make important first-time purchases while in school, making this a desirable audience for advertisers.8
However, College Publisher has its drawbacks. Many publications argue that College Publisher has become too commercialized and doesn’t allow for originality in Web site creation. Penn State’s Daily Collegian Web Editor Ian Brown says the Daily Collegian elected to design its own CMS instead of using College Publisher because it seemed too “restrictive.”9
El Vaquero is the magazine for Glendale Community College. According to Editor-in-Chief Jane Pojawa, the organization has a lot of problems with College Publisher.
“We have a love/antipathy thing with College Publisher,” Pojawa says. “Apparently College Publisher is supposed to be fixing some of the things we don't like about it, but it has yet to be seen. We like that it's free. However, we can't figure out the ads thing. The slideshow feature is pretty lame. The archiving thing is tricky, and once you've chosen a format you can't really change it. Changing the HTML code is impossible, and tech support is uneven.”
But Pojawa agrees that the CMS is easy to learn and teach staff members. “Anyone who can do Facebook or Myspace should have no trouble at all using College Publisher,” she says. “But it doesn't do many things as well as other programs.”10
Director of Student Media at Indiana University Ron Johnson agrees with the idea of content management independence and applies it to the Indiana Student Daily.
“It has been unfortunate to see College Publisher take advantage of its clients’ content on College Publisher-produced campus sites,” Johnson says. “If we were a College Publisher client, honestly, we’d be aghast, angry and frustrated.”11
While Web designers and news editors criticize College Publisher, it’s the largest interactive network of online college newspapers in the country. College Publisher members claim a combined average of five million unique users per month and currently serve approximately 600 student publications.12
WordPress
Another popular content management system is WordPress. WordPress was built on PHP, a general-purpose Web scripting language and MySQL, an open source database. After launching version 2.0, WordPress’s downloads nearly doubled to 3,816,965 in 2007.13 WordPress claims to be completely customizable with a plugins directory that offers everything from WordPress.com stats to WP Super Cache, a caching engine that produces static HTML files. While WordPress has 574 themes to easily customize your site, these themes can be modified with HTML coding. If a feature is missing, it can more than likely be added with a plugin.14
Some popular student news sites have migrated from College Publisher to WordPress. The Miami Hurricane decided to make the transition to WordPress and take advantage of SlideShowPro Director, a flash-based slideshow application for presenting online photo and video content. The news organization also uses Vimeo, a video hosting site, and Issuu, a platform for uploading and publishing documents for the Web. Since upgrading, The Miami Hurricane’s total cost for the move was only $205.
The Miami Hurricane uses WordPress’s LiveWire 2.0 Premium News theme. It took four months to migrate the system from College Publisher to WordPress, but in the end, webmaster Brian Schlansky says it was worth it.
“If you have a dedicated server available, this will be the cheapest way to build a site since there are no recurring costs, and the university pays for bandwidth,” he says. “It also gives you complete control of the hardware.”15
Mindy McAdams teaches university courses in online journalism at University of Florida and manages her successful blog, “Teaching Online Journalism.”16 McAdams recommends using WordPress not only for personal blogs but also as a beginning CMS for small online publications.
“For a lot of smaller and less demanding publications, as well as micro sites, having a free and open-source CMS (with a dependable MySQL back-end) has a lot of benefits,” she says. “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel -- you can get a fully functioning wheel, with extras, for free!”17
But WordPress is not a suitable CMS for larger publications, and while themes can be customized, there is still an overall format that is clearly recognizable. However, while some news organizations such as Indiana Daily Student host their own CMS, they still use the WordPress software.18
In-House Design
Compared to College Publisher and WordPress, very few student news publications host their own CMS and have original student/staff design. Completely independent design and hosting is complicated because there are so many components that are needed to create and support text, photo, video, archiving and layout. One of the most important building blocks is an HTML static page generator, which provides a backup system for the Web site.19
Penn State’s Daily Collegian Online uses Movable Type to generate its static pages. While Movable Type is similar to WordPress in that its Web server is responsible for generating pages on-demand, it’s the only system that builds the pages when updates are made in the content itself. This results in a reduced load for the server because it’s only responsible for building pages when updates are made, not every time someone accesses the site.20
It’s possible to create a decent site without using a CMS. Ball State’s Ball Bearings Online was completely built and designed by staff members. The staff uploads their content through templates in Dreamweaver and PHP.21
“We feel that a content management system kind of limits our creativity because you can only develop around what the content management system will allow,” says Ball Bearing’s Editor-in-Chief Sarah McHie. “By developing a site ourselves, nothing can limit what we do, and we also give our students that experience of knowing how to upload and manage a Web site.”22
Ball Bearings Online is planning a complete redesign of its Web site that will launch in spring of 2009. It will not use a content management system and will be completely developed through Dreamweaver and other databases.
Ohio University’s The Post is fairly new to the online student news network and is currently undergoing a complete redesign. According to Editor-in-Chief Rick Rouan, the publication recently decided to rebuild its site with the help of 1up!, an outside company that accommodates more multimedia.23 1up! provides revenue tools and flexible management systems for publications. Its pricing model is based on the publication’s circulation. Flat monthly fees start at $245 and includes full use of software features, site hosting, initial site design, training, unlimited archives, FTP directory, POP3 email, site statistics and unlimited bandwidth.24
Where does the content come from?
While most of the first student online publications were renditions of a print version, colleges are quickly embracing the idea of Web-based content. North by Northwestern is Northwestern’s primer news site. It started in the summer of 2006 to satisfy the school’s need for online journalism. The online publication’s content is based around campus and culture stories. After two years and 16 SPJ Mark of Excellence awards, North by Northwestern expanded and launched a print magazine in spring 2008. North by Northwestern currently has more than 100 on staff and membership is open to anyone wanting to participate.25
Indiana Daily Student takes a different approach to content. While most of the content on the site is student-generated, it also includes Associated Press stories and video reports.26 Indiana Daily Student’s content relies heavily on text and photo from its weekday print edition. It bolsters online content with a daily headline podcast and student-produced slideshow, audio and video reports from campus events. According to Director Ron Johnson, original campus news and commentary receive the majority of the site’s traffic.27
Florida International University’s FIUSM.com has taken an innovative approach to content sharing. According to Online Director Rock Martinez, FIUSM.com is redefining the roles of its section editors in the workflow.
“At FIU Student Media, we treat the newspaper, the Web site and the radio station as separate entities,” he says. “Together the three editors of each medium hire a news director and a sports director as a board. In some respects they have more power over content than we do. We treat it this way to make sure the roles are in the right place. People focus on the content they’re best at, and managers focus on what they’re best at: managing and setting the vision for their publication.”28
Currently, FIUSM.com’s entertainment and opinion section editors are still under the Editor-in-Chief for the newspaper, but this plan will be modified to accommodate publication for all three mediums. This will also allow FIU Student Media to have an experienced staff in multimedia publishing once it adds a new medium.
Ohio University’s The Post is made-up of a staff of 150, which includes copy editors, designers and photographers.29 The Post Online is completely separate from the newspaper because it’s content is not based on coursework. However, on rare occasions current staff members will work on a story for a class and publish it online. According to Rouan, The Post never approaches classes for content.30
Numerous student Web sites get content from coursework, or the news site is an actual product of a class. El Vaquero is an example of a site that gets the majority of its content from class work. Participation in the newspaper is dependent on a prerequisite journalism class and lower-level newspaper publication classes that can be taken more than once for credit.31
The Future of Student News
The advancement of student news Web sites coincides with the future of student print. As the need for newspapers diminishes and publications migrate to the Web, news organizations will focus on Web-based content. Student news Web sites will have more content packages with follow-up stories. Since the majority of online student news is based on that organization’s print edition, content will probably be heavy on text in the beginning but will eventually expand to more video and audio content. Moreover, colleges will begin creating content only for the Web, without a follow-up print edition.
Tennessee Journalist is an example of this type of Web site. All of the content is by students for the site. Therefore, students are able to think of stories from different angles, instead of just the archaic inverted pyramid text formula. Students are now taking the subject and the story outline and illustrating it with more than text. The question they’re asking themselves is, “What type of media would best deliver this story?” This is where video, photo slideshows, sidebar media and audio files become an important part in news reporting.
Associate Professor at Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University Rich Gordon says regardless of the economy and shrinking audience numbers, online news and new technology will be key in saving journalism, and it starts with students.
“Technology continues to march forward, creating new devices that can act as conduits for journalism,” Gordon says. “A world where TVs can download Internet content or where mobile phones and iPods can access online video is a place where citizens have many more ways to access great journalism. We are only a decade into the Internet era; this medium is still in its infancy. But if I'm right about the direction Internet journalism is headed, some group of journalists working today -- or perhaps still enrolled in school -- will be recognized as the pioneers in the field.”32
1 Channel One Networks. 30 Oct. 2008. Channel One LLC. 20 Oct. 2008. <http://channelone.com/static/about>.
2 “A Left-Right Punch to Educational TV.” Business Week (May 22, 2000): 12. Academic OneFile. Gale. University of Tennessee Libraries. 31 Oct. 2008
<http://find.galegroup.com/itx/start.do?prodId=AONE>.
3 “Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Fundamentals.” 15 Feb. 2005. W3C Organization. 21 Oct. 2008. <http://www.w3.org/TR/charmod>.
4 Student Monitor (2003). Computing & the Internet: Fall 2002. Ridgewood, N.J.
5 College Publisher. 2008. College Media Network. 19 Oct. 2008. <http://collegepublisher.com/about-us/company-history.html>.
6 College Publisher. 2008. College Media Network. 19 Oct. 2008. <http://collegepublisher.com/about-us/frequently-asked-questions.html>.
7 CP 5.0. 2008. College Media Network. 20 Oct. 2008. <http://collegemedianetwork.com/publishing/online-pubilshing.htm>.
8 “Campus papers are well-read, and advertisers are noticing.” Baltimore Sun. 24 Nov. 2006. Globe Newspaper Company. 24 Oct. 2008. <http://boston.com>. Path: Business; Globe; Articles.
9 Brown, Ian. “Question About Daily Collegian Online.” Email to Amanda Wills. 27 Oct. 2008
10 Pajama, Jane. “Question About El Vaquero.” Email to Amanda Wills. 29 Oct. 2008.
11 Johnson, Ronald. “Question About Indiana Daily Student.” Email to Amanda Wills. 26 Oct. 2008.
12 College Publisher. 2008. College Media Network. 19 Oct. 2008. <http://collegepublisher.com/about-us>.
13 WordPress. 2008. WordPress. 21 Oct. 2008. <http://wordpress.org/about>.
14 “How We Did It: Moving The Miami Hurricane from College Publisher to WordPress.” 3 Sept. 2008. College Media Innovation. 20 Oct. 2008. <http://collegemediainnovation.org>. Path: Blog; 2008/09/03.
15 Ibid.
16 “Brief Biography.” 2005. Melinda J. McAdams. 25 Oct. 2008. <http://mindymcadams.com/bio.htm>.
17 “WordPress As Your Web Authoring Tool.” 4 March 2008. Teaching Online Journalism. <http://mindymcadams.com/tojou/2008/wordpress-as-your-web-authoring-tool>.
18 Johnson, Ron. “Question About Indiana Daily Student.” Email to Amanda Wills. 26 Oct. 2008.
19 “SCR29: Adding Keyboard-Accessible Actions to Static HTML Elements.” 2008. W3C. 29 Oct. 2008. <http://www.w3.org>. Path: WAI; GL; WCAG20.
20 Brown, Ian. “Question About Daily Collegian Online.” Email to Amanda Wills. 27 Oct. 2008.
21 “What is Ball Bearings?” 2006. Ball Bearings Online. 25 Oct. 2008. <http://www.ballbearingsonline.com/about/index.htm>.
22 McHie, Sarah. “Question About Ball Bearings Online.” Email to Amanda Wills. 26 Oct. 2008.
23 Rouan, Richard. “Question About The Post.” Email to Amanda Wills. 25 Oct. 2008.
24 Going 1up!. 1998-2008. 1up! Software. 26 Oct. 2008. <http://www.going1up.com>. Path: Main; Section ID.
25 About North by Northwestern. 2006-2008. North by Northwestern. 27 Oct. 2008. <http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/about>.
26 IDS News. 2008. Indiana Daily Student Online. 27 Oct. 2008. <http://www.idsnews.com/news/about/default.aspx>.
27 Johnson, Ron. “Question About Indiana Daily Student.” Email to Amanda Wills. 26 Oct. 2008.
28 Martinez, Rick. “FIUSM.com Questions.” Email to Amanda Wills. 25 Oct. 2008.
29 About The Post. 2008. The Post Online. 27 Oct. 2008. <http://www.thepost.ohiou.edu/static/aboutpost>.
30 Rouan, Richard. “Question About The Post.” Email to Amanda Wills. 26 Oct. 2008.
31 Pojawa, Jane. “Question About El Vaquero.” Email to Amanda Wills. 29 Oct. 2008.
32 “Online opportunities make journalism’s future bright, despite gloomy feelings.” 27 Oct. 2005. Knight Digital Media Center. 22 Oct. 2008. <http://www.ojr.org>. Path: OJR; Stories; 051027; Gordon.
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