College Media Matters

The still relatively new batch of online student outlets with new media sense and underground sensibilities have been dubbed nothing less than full-blown “blogging fraternities.”  A new Chronicle of Higher Education feature declares that the “national wave of student-run Web outfits [are] determined to reinvent college journalism. . . . Readers devour these sites. College officials fret over them. And competitors carp about their edgy methods, which sometimes include a publish-it-now-correct-it-later approach to campus rumors.”  (Full disclosure: I am briefly cited in the piece.)

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Penn State University's Onward State is one of the members of the modern student blogging frat pack mentioned by the Chronicle.

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Some of the new media methods online student outfits are trying on for size, according to the Chronicle and research of mine that is cited:

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- They break news and boast high Web traffic, at times besting their student newspaper counterparts   (Chronicle piece: “Underground media has always existed. But not until recently . . . have there been underground papers published on a global distribution platform and amplified by the personal social networks of editors . . . who can share posts with more than 1,300 Facebook ‘friends.’”)

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- Yes, they occasionally dabble (responsibly) in rumor and innuendo (NYU Local founder Cody Brown previously wrote that this dabbling is part of a more widespread ‘real time’ reporting phenomenon)

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- Schools are starting to recognize their presence and marketing potential (For example, New York University has begun advertising on NYU Local.)

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- They consider the whole newsroom face-to-face meet-up thing a remnant of yesterday’s news outlet (Onward State apparently enjoys Google Wave. Staffers at other outlets with whom I’ve spoken rely upon more traditional mass e-mailing, IMing, Facebook, and Google Docs.)