College Media Matters

Since my post about Business Insider’s failings went live last weekend, almost everyone has agreed that the outlet produces subpar, rush-job, headline-driven journalism.

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But many have also stated outright or implied that I am not in a position to criticize BI or anything else in the news business or that my insights will not be taken seriously.  Why?  Because I’m a professor, not a “professional.”  I’m supposedly an outsider to the “real” industry, unable to fully grasp its structure, day-to-day stresses, and longer-term shifts.

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Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget: “Dear Journalism Students: Don’t Mean To Intrude, But Your Professor Doesn’t Get It”

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ZDNet’s Tom Foremski: “[M]y chief complaint about journalism professors is how distant they are from a real newsroom.”

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About.com’s Tony Rogers: “Journalism professor Dan Reimold started a fight he couldn’t win when he criticized Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal.  That’s because journalists more often than not see journalism professors as effete, ivory-tower types who are woefully out of touch with the realities of the news business, especially in the digital age.”

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The headline to the About.com post: “Reimold’s Problem? Journalists Don’t Trust Journalism Professors.”

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This distrust, and the accompanying perception that j-profs just don’t “get it” and live in ivory towers far from real journalism, must change.

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Below are five reasons journalism professionals need to accept and should excitedly welcome input and, yes, criticism from journalism professors.

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This is the age of the professor-professional. 

Each workday, the staffers at Business Insider search for stories, blog, and write occasional longer pieces.  Funny, so do I.  I am a professional blogger for a pair of national organizations (ACP & USA TODAY), a paid (and in some cases unpaid) freelancer for a few more, and an author right now under book contract.  By year’s end I will have attended and spoke at journalism, media, and literary conferences and workshops in Singapore, Senegal, Seattle, New York City, Fort Lauderdale, Gainesville, Chicago, and St. Petersburg.  Earlier this year, under deadline, I blogged from a hotel bathtub in Malaysia– the only spot in the room with working Wi-Fi.  (See photo below.)  Is it made of ivory?

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Yet, apparently I’m not professional, nor am I in the know about what’s happening within “real” journalism today and how to do it.  Blodget: “I’m just guessing here, but I’d bet that if we put the good professor in [Business Insider deputy editor] Joe Weisenthal’s chair, he would fail miserably.”  Sir, just name the day.  I’ll pay for my own plane ticket.  And I don’t even need a chair.  (See photo above.)

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Blodget seems to truly believe professors like me just don’t “get it.”  According to Rogers, we will never be trusted by the newsroom masses.  According to Foremski, we are distant from what’s going down.  Gentlemen, unlike the tub above, these assessments need to be scrubbed.

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Show me a top journalist who isn’t adjuncting or guest speaking or strongly considering returning to school for a higher degree.  Show me a good professor who isn’t freelancing or under professional contract.  Show me a standout journalism student who isn’t working or writing for a professional outlet.  The lines are not just blurring.  They no longer exist.  We are all teachers-students-professionals nowadays, at least the good ones.

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We are also all faking it until we make it.  See point two.

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Professionals don’t know any better than professors. 

This past January in Singapore, I took part in a simulated skydiving session within the world’s largest vertical indoor wind tunnel (a pic below).  It was deafeningly loud.  Gale-force winds whipped me dizzy.  I frequently found myself twisting and turning upside down, against my control.  It reminded me of journalism, circa now.

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We are all lost in a swirl of journalism topsy-turydom.  No one– not I, Blodget, Foremski, Rogers, Jay Rosen, Jill Abramson or anyone else– knows how it is all going to turn out.  The best we can do– all of us who love, work, and live for journalism– is innovate, experiment, question, and assess where we stand, where we think we might be heading, and how we can do things better along the way.

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College newsrooms are people too.

What counts as newsroom experience these days?  Working in an old school one?  A print-digital hybrid?  A fully virtual home-based version?  What about the campus newsroom?  Some student news outlets and journalists are bad.  So are some professional outlets and journalists.  But on the flip side, the best student journos and pubs are innovating and producing content on a level that deserves greater attention and respect.  (Three quick examples: The Crimson Tide’s historic post-tornado coverage; The Red & Black’s digital reinvention; and The University Press’s special Board of Trustees investigation.)

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In most cases, these students have professors at their backs and by their sides– teaching, mentoring, revising, probing, and, nowadays, helping reinvent.  As I mentioned, the professor-professional separation is fading within journalism.  So is the student-professional label.

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Bottom line: Many journalism professors assist and advise outlets that reach tons of readers, keep their community’s power-base in check, and face the same advertising, economic, digital, and distribution issues as their professional counterparts.  These profs-advisers “get” what’s happening to journalism, as a practice and an industry. They see it and experience it for themselves every day.

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We’re at your back and by your side.

Journalism professionals spend their careers focused on others.  Don’t bristle when the focus is turned on you.  Professors are engaged individuals who study journalism and are given the time, freedom, and tenure-tracked motivation to analyze various aspects of the industry and help make sense of what it all means.  Who better to provide this service?  When the story is about journalism, we are trusted sources, same as professionals.

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A “scholarly” colleague once told me the professor-professional relationship is the equivalent of the police and internal affairs.  I disagreed vehemently.  We’re not out to simply catch wrongdoing or keep things in check.  Similar to our role with students, we stand side by side with professionals or have their backs, offering credit when it’s due, providing context to help frame achievements in larger terms, and trying to educate everyone on what the heck our craft is all about.

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Love and Other Drugs

Anyone who criticizes me for commenting on journalism by asserting I’m not a true professional doesn’t love the craft as much as me.  Journalism isn’t professional to me.  It’s personal.  It’s the love of my life.  I practice it, study it, teach it, and soak it in every single day like a crazy-cool wonder drug.  And when I feel the responsibility and urgency to comment upon it, I will.  When I do, I’m not a professor or a professional.  I’m a journalist.

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As part of a journalism-rights-focused First Amendment Free Food Festival (FAFFF) at the University of Tampa last fall, we hired a glitter tattoo artist. My arm is the one on top. :)

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Over the past academic year, there has been an explosion of new or renewed campus activities, pop culture phenomena, tech trends, generational shifts, and social movements started by or significantly impacting students. Most can be summed up in a single word.

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I’ve noticed a small number of words appearing more frequently, prominently or controversially during the past two semesters on campuses nationwide. Some were brand-new. Others were redefined or reached a tipping point of interest or popularity. And still others showed a remarkable staying power, carrying over from semesters and years past.

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I’ve selected 15 as finalists for what I am calling the “2011-2012 College Word of the Year Contest.” OK, a few are actually acronyms or short phrases. But altogether the terms– whether short-lived or seemingly permanent– offer a unique glimpse at what students participated in, talked about, fretted over, and fought for this past fall and spring.

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As Time Magazine’s Touré confirms, “The words we coalesce around as a society say so much about who we are. The language is a mirror that reflects our collective soul.” Let’s take a quick look in the collegiate rearview mirror. In alphabetical order, here are my College Word of the Year finalists.

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Boomerangers

Right after commencement, a growing number of college graduates are heading home, diploma in hand and futures on hold. They are the boomerangers, young 20-somethings who are spending their immediate college afterlife in hometown purgatory. A majority move back into their childhood bedroom due to poor employment or graduate school prospects or to save money so they can soon travel internationally, engage in volunteer work or launch their own business.

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A brief homestay has long been an option favored by some fresh graduates, but it’s recently reemerged in the media as a defining activity of the current student generation.  “Graduation means something completely different than it used to 30 years ago,” student columnist Madeline Hennings wrote in January for The Collegiate Times at Virginia Tech. “At my age, my parents were already engaged, planning their wedding, had jobs, and thinking about starting a family. Today, the economy is still recovering, and more students are moving back in with mom and dad.”

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Drunkorexia

This five-syllable word has become the most publicized new disorder impacting college students. Many students, researchers and health professionals consider it a dangerous phenomenon. Critics, meanwhile, dismiss it as a media-driven faux-trend. And others contend it is nothing more than a fresh label stamped onto an activity that students have been carrying out for years.

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The affliction, which leaves students hungry and at times hung over, involves “starving all day to drink at night.” As a March report in The Daily Pennsylvanian at the University of Pennsylvania further explained, it centers on students “bingeing or skipping meals in order to either compensate for alcohol calories consumed later at night, or to get drunk faster. . . . At its most severe, it is a combination of an eating disorder and alcohol dependency.”

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Drunkorexia first surged into the spotlight this past fall when an eye-opening study by University of Missouri researchers revealed “one in six students said they restricted food in order to consume alcohol within the last year.”

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FADerall

Studying for finals. Paying attention in class. Simply wanting to feel wired. The explosion of illegal Adderall use by students has many root causes — and a number of unintended side effects.  The pill’s medical purpose is to help individuals with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and narcolepsy. Yet, it’s being increasingly co-opted by college students looking for an academic edge or a head-trip. Apparently, full-time students are twice as likely to illegally use Adderall as individuals their age who are not in school or only enrolled part-time.

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The results of this so-called FADerall: a running debate about whether the “academic steroid” is equivalent to actual cheating; student Adderall dealers who make oodles of cash selling the pills, especially around midterms and finals; student Adderall addicts whose sleep schedules, brains, and bodily functions are thrown off; and students with verifiable ADHD who face increased peer pressure to pass along pills to friends and increased scrutiny from medical professionals wary of promoting an academic doping revolution.

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FOMO

Students are increasingly obsessed with being connected — to their high-tech devices, social media chatter and their friends during a night, weekend or roadtrip in which something worthy of a Facebook status update or viral YouTube video might occur.  (For an example of the latter, check out this young woman “tree dancing“ during a recent music festival.)

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This ever-present emotional-digital anxiety now has a defining acronym: FOMO or Fear of Missing Out.  Recent Georgetown University graduate Kinne Chapin confirmed FOMO “is a widespread problem on college campuses. Each weekend, I have a conversation with a friend of mine in which one of us expresses the following: ‘I’m not really in the mood to go out, but I feel like I should.’ Even when we’d rather catch up on sleep or melt our brain with some reality television, we feel compelled to seek bigger and better things from our weekend. We fear that if we don’t partake in every Saturday night’s fever, something truly amazing will happen, leaving us hopelessly behind.”

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Gender-Neutral

At a rising number of colleges and universities– in middle America and along the coasts– students are protesting, passing resolutions and publishing commentaries in support of a single hyphenated buzzword: gender-neutral.  The push for gender-neutral campus housing and restroom options appears to be part of a larger student-led fight on some campuses for greater “transgender inclusiveness,” something The Oklahoma Daily at the University of Oklahoma is hailing as the heart of “this generation’s civil rights movement.”

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The Daily Texan at the University of Texas reported in late February that more than 100 schools currently offer gender-neutral housing programs nationwide, a huge leap in the last six years. Student newspapers are also helping spread awareness about the need for “safe restrooms,” in part by publishing reports and op-eds about “the population on campus currently uncomfortable with gendered bathrooms.” Last November, Samuel Levine, a University of Chicago rising junior, contended that “some students say an environment without gender labels has become an integral part of their college experience… Gender-neutral colleges can be a safe and comfortable place for students who are transgender or who don’t identify with their biological sex.”

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Helicopter Parents

Certain moms and dads just don’t know when to quit. Even with their kids grown up and enrolled at a school far away, they continue to restrict, coddle and fuss over their academic, professional and social lives with an eye-opening vigor. So-called helicopter parents have hovered over higher education for years, but recently rose again to A-list prominence among the student and professional media and scholarly community for their continued extraordinary interference in their children’s lives.

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These parents constantly phone, text, e-mail and tweet at their undergraduate kids, along with monitoring all social media activity.  They contact professors, admissions counselors and nowadays even employers to promote their children or check on the status of their work. They try to Facebook friend their son’s or daughter’s classmates and significant others and, separately, ensure they have a say in every major and minor life decision– even when it leaves their children exasperated, rebellious or clinically depressed.

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To check out the rest of my College Word of the Year nominees, click here or on the screenshot below.

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Joe Weisenthal regularly works 16-hour days without rest, to the point that his own bosses worry publicly about him burning out and force him to take vacations, his wife needs to tweet him when she really wants his attention, and he occasionally lapses into a catatonic stupor in which he doesn’t do anything for an entire day but watch TV.  He regularly publishes content that is “wrong or incomplete or misleading” and full of “air and sugar” (which I take to mean insignificant).  He publishes this content on a headline-driven site when he himself says the stock market is not headline-driven.  And he races to submit roughly 15 blog posts a day, rarely writing anything above a few hundred words, and hardly ever talking to sources on the phone to verify information or gather context.

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The New York Times reported all this two weeks ago in a profile on Weisenthal.  In a post over the weekend, I had the good sense to raise the question: Is any of this any good?

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Henry Blodget apparently thinks it’s great– and will attempt to bully anyone who doth question it.  The Business Insider co-founder and CEO wrote what someone just joked to me is the longest post ever published by the online outlet.  In it, he attacks me for having the gall to confirm that I don’t want my own students to live the life Weisenthal is described enduring or to produce inaccurate, rush-job, “air and sugar” journalism.  That’s right, he attacked me, NOT the New York Times, which confirmed all this in its profile of Weisenthal.

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Mr. Blodget, your own brass is cited by the Times expressing concerns about Weisenthal’s insane work habits.  Any medical doctor worth his license would concur that pushing yourself to the point that your brain and body periodically break down and you basically stop functioning is not good for you.  And any half-decent journalism ethicist would agree that being “wrong or incomplete or misleading” does not pave the way to a Pulitzer.

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But hey, if that’s what you demand of your employees– to the point that you criticize anyone who questions it– that’s on you.  Just please, for everyone’s sake, stop falling back on the digital vs. old school journalism trope, which you roll out seemingly right on cue in your hit piece this morning.  Apparently, because I hold up acclaimed former Times foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid as a journalistic role model instead of Weisenthal, I am of course a professor who doesn’t get it, stuck in the past, watching old clips of Walter Cronkite, and wandering the streets of New Orleans with Times-Picayune ink stains on my non-texting fingers.

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Journalism is changing.  Yes, the old school can do it better.  But so can you.  If you want to hold up your site as a model for quality journalism and the type of nonstop hell you apparently put your best employee through as the inevitable future work shift, that’s on you.  That doesn’t mean we all have to agree with it.

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And for the record, since you mentioned it, I don’t just “describe myself” as a college journalism scholar.  I am one.  What do you call yourself?  Today, I’d say it’s a bully, and yes, someone who doesn’t get it.

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A recent essay by a Yale University graduating senior reflecting on her time in school and limitless future possibilities is spreading across the wider web in the wake of her sudden death Saturday in a car crash.

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Within the piece, featured in a special commencement issue of The Yale Daily News, 22-year-old Massachusetts native Marina Keegan shares her affection for the Yale community, defining the security and warmth it provided her as “the opposite of loneliness.”  She also reminds her fellow graduates that even though they may already feel limited by their chosen degrees, peer competition, and general life stresses and responsibilities, they are still free to grab hold of the world and leave an imprint upon it in whatever way they want.

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In her words, “We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. . . . What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”

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While powerful in their own right, her sentiments took on special meaning and made national news after reports confirmed Keegan had died over the weekend when the car in which she was riding veered off the road, hit a guardrail, and rolled over twice.  Prior to the accident, she had been set to begin work as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker.

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Two of the comments posted beneath her piece:

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“What a cruel turn of events. I only knew you through your byline and through mutual friends, but through them, you showed yourself as one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever had the privilege to know. The world is less without you, Marina. Rest in peace.”

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“I think it’s time for us to remember that the same thing could happen to us. We think we are so young, that we have so much time, but it could all end in a second. She was looking forward to so much, and this was not one them. We should not fear. And we should hold each other while we have them.”

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Description: “As American University School of Public Affairs graduates walked across the stage to accept their diplomas, graduate Sarah Cooper got the surprise of a lifetime. In addition to the excitement of being a new graduate, Cooper is now newly engaged to School of Communication graduate Sam Miller. He proposed on stage in front of family and classmates.”

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Three comments beneath it: “‘I don’t wanna get married until after college.’ Pounces the instant she’s done!”; “What a pig. Way to hijack her personal moment of pride and glory with your cliche gender role-play.”; and “Man, I’d hate to be the person to get announced right after her.”

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Related

Harvard Baseball Team Goes B-List Viral with In-Transit ‘Call Me Maybe’ Lip Dub

College Viral Video: The Zorro Lecture Prank

University of Rochester Admissions Hip-Hop Video Goes Viral

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Business Insider’s Henry Blodget is Wrong: Here’s Why

5 Reasons Journalism Professionals Should Accept Feedback & Criticism From Journalism Professors

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Roughly two weeks ago, New York Times Magazine published a profile of Joe Weisenthal, a fresh-faced, workaholic, social media whiz who serves as a writer and deputy editor at Business Insider.  Upon its online posting, the instant reactions from the journalism cognoscenti seemed to be admiration and disbelief about his insane work ethic and supposed conquering of today’s nonstop news cycle.

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These reactions are not wrong, just incomplete.  There is a ton to respect about Weisenthal on spec.  He has become a major player in his coverage area at a relatively young age seemingly through sheer hard work.  And he excels at many elements of news reporting 2.0, including audience collaboration, multi-platform engagement, personal branding, and real-time reporting.

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But if the profile is accurate, many of his professional routines and achievements also sadden and repel me.  Step back, and read the profile again.  While lauded in the Times as a leader of the new wave of all-star newshounds, he is not a role model I would hold up for my own students.  In fact, in a number of areas, he literally embodies the opposite of what I want them to strive for.  Three examples are below.

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He almost never separates himself from his work.  

The Times piece describes Weisenthal as “someone so absurdly passionate about the latest economic data that he forgoes sleep, night life, and the company of his wife.”  Passion is fantastic.  Obsession is unhealthy.

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His bosses express on-the-record concerns about him burning out.  He “rarely stops fidgeting with his cellphone.”  He tweets about doing nothing on Friday evenings or the weekend but working.  The photo featured in the screengrab above is an actual shot of him working in bed while his wife sleeps, an almost-daily occurrence.  A snippet from the profile: “When [his wife] really needs his attention, she said she sends him a tweet.”

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There is even one odd reference in the piece about his penchant for using the restroom “much more often than the average 31-year-old.”  I’m not sure what that means exactly.  Is it because he’s so high-strung he gets constant diarrhea?  The bathroom is his only real escape?  Even his bladder is a distraction to be overcome or multi-tasked? Overall, it doesn’t seem like Weisenthal has conquered the news cycle.  He is a pathetic slave to it.  As one commenter wrote beneath the profile, “Wow, that sounds like a terrible, depressing life.  He’s welcome to it, but you couldn’t pay me enough.”

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Bottom line: I teach my students to love their work and work hard, but not at the expense of having a life or a regular urinary tract.  I also teach them to value time off and stepping back– it can be incredibly restorative for the mind and inspire bigger picture thinking and new ideas.

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He is wrong and sensational a lot. 

According to the piece, “Some of what he writes is air and sugar.  Some of it is wrong or incomplete or misleading.  But he delivers jolts of sharp, original insight often enough to hold the attention of a high-powered audience.”  Is this the standard we’re now holding up for success?  Feel free to be “wrong or incomplete or misleading” or sappy or insignificant, as long as you also practice halfway decent journalism often enough to get on people’s radars.

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In part, Weisenthal is hamstrung by his chosen field and the writing he is expected to provide– involving lots of predictions and subtle and overt commentary.  There is also of course some value in publicly working through new data and breaking news, going back-and-forth on what it all means, and coming to a final solid conclusion.  But the simple fact, according to the Times, is that he is inaccurate as often– and possibly more– than he is right.

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He is also frequently sensational, again an offshoot of the outlet at which he is employed.  One fun irony: He is quoted telling the writer that the stock market is not actually headline-driven, less than 300 words after being described as working for a site that features posts almost always “wrapped with a loud, blunt headline.”

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Bottom line: I teach my students to be accurate and thorough much more often than they are wrong or incomplete, almost always in fact– even when overseeing a blog or publishing a bunch.  I also teach them to produce journalism that is evenhanded and content-driven, not simply loud, blunt, and headline-driven.

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He writes too much– and not enough. 

Weisenthal apparently publishes 15 blog posts and 150 tweets a day.  I give him credit for apparently seeking news in between the lines at times by spotting quietly-emerging phenomena and reading through reports and data that others most likely scan or ignore.  (His best quote: “It’s from the subtleties that you start to see the trends.”)  But quantity often only works to lessen quality.

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He writes a ton, but even his longest entries run only a few hundred words.  And the piece portrays him as so constantly stressed about being first to post, he races to get something, anything, online, reporting be damned.  Think of how powerful his journalism work might be if he channeled his laser-focused-energies on a longer-form piece or took the time to wrangle up a ton of sources before simply rushing to post, post, post.

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Bottom line: I certainly teach my students to join the online conversation and to recognize the advantages and expectations of publishing and sharing more.  But I also urge them to not lose sight of the fact that time can work for us, not just against us.  At least every once in awhile, remove yourself from the rush and use the time you have been given to do your job to build deeper, more impacting stories.

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To learn from the work and life of someone I do want my students to emulate, check out this excellent analysis of Anthony Shadid’s reporting by UPIU’s Krista Kapralos.

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An odd, public war of words has played out this week between comedian Hannibal Buress and The Daily Eastern News at Eastern Illinois University.  It began Sunday evening.  In a Comedy Central stand-up special, Buress ranted for five minutes near the start of his set about a three-year-old, 300-word DEN article hyping a campus show he once headlined.

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He expresses a mix of both genuine and mock disgust at the piece for containing what he sees as awkward descriptions, racist undertones, and general tackiness.  Before diving in, he literally pulls a paper with the piece printed on it from his pants pocket and intermittently reads from it and riffs on it.  In his words, “This is all real and in print.  A human being wrote this and then they sent it to a higher-ranking human being, an editor, and that person said, ‘Yeah, let’s go with that.’”

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Among other portions, he mines laughs from a redundant phrase describing his humor as focused on “comedic jokes.” (“Wait, wait, wait.  Comedic jokes?  As opposed to all the other types of jokes that are out there.  Am I missing out on a genre of jokes?”)

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Separately, although he confirms saying it during a phone interview, he mocks the student writer for noting that his shows touch on “personal stories, current events, the streets [which he implies through a pause and audience laughter is an unwordly reference], and even food.”  (“What?!  Even food!  Who else is talking about food in the comedy game right now?  Nobody, just Hannibal Buress, that’s all.  He has cornered that subject matter.  He is the Lenny Bruce of grocery store humor.”)

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He also criticizes the inclusion of a student event organizer who fully admits he invited the comedian to EIU in part because he is African-American and his appearance will raise performer and audience diversity.  Finally, Buress calls out the paper for mentioning the amount he was paid for the show– claiming it is embarrassing given the relatively low amount and does not add anything of value to the article.

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In an editorial response, headlined “Buress’ Comments Unfair, Skewed,” top DEN staff first cite the newsworthiness of including performer pay in a piece: “What Buress failed to recognize is that the budget for the event was made possible through student funding.  As a publication, transparency is a vital function of our reporting, and we believe that informing Eastern students of how their funds are appropriated is imperative to our goals.  By including how much the University Board was paying Buress, the DEN was following the same protocol by which we might cover a Student Senate or Pension Board meeting.”

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The editorial also criticizes Buress for playing both sides– telling a reporter something and then poking fun at the reporter for publishing it: “During his act, Buress admits to telling our reporter that his performances include jokes related to ‘personal stories, current events, the streets and even food.’  Buress then proceeded to mock the DEN for including this comment.  However, the blame for such a portrayal lies explicitly on Buress. If he did not wish for us to include that he talks about ‘the streets’ in his act, he should not have said it in his interview.”

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Related

College Media Villains of the Year: James Franco, A-Lister, Apes Lover, Yale Daily News Hater

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The web address: future.dailyemerald.com. The one-word header atop its homepage: Revolution.  And the tagline just beneath it: “The Oregon Daily Emerald, reinvented for the digital age.”

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The fantastic student newspaper at the University of Oregon– long built atop a daily print edition– is morphing into a “modern college media company.”  On a special site that went live earlier today, the outgoing and incoming EICs Tyree Harris and Andy Rossback and publisher Ryan Frank outline a number of big-time changes.

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Among them: a print issue that will now appear twice per week instead of daily, in an alternative weekly format (see front page example below)– Emerald Monday (“Think Newsweek + ESPN Magazine”) and Emerald Weekend (“Think Rolling Stone + Wired + Vanity Fair”); the creation of an in-house tech company The Garage and a separate marketing and events division both aspiring simply “to make college life better”; and a ramp-up in “real-time news, community engagement, photo galleries, and videos on the web and social media.”

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As the leaders of the new Emerald Media Group share about the paper’s digital-first plans, “Daily is too slow. Our newsroom will report in real-time on our website, on mobile apps and through social media. We will wrap up our report with a morning email edition Monday-to-Friday. We will add blogs on topics relevant to college students, such as football, fashion and sex. We will engage with readers through whatever digital channel is most relevant to them.”

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The narrator at the close of this teaser video confirms, “We’re proud of our history, but it’s time for a revolution.“

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An online student newspaper at Cambridge University is courting controversy for staging a pair of contests asking readers to select the “Rear of the Year.“

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In separate photo breakdowns, The Tab presents a small group of male and female Cambridge students with their butts facing the camera– fully or partially exposed or clearly outlined by tight-fitting clothing.

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A brief cutline accompanying each pic whimsically and almost always sexually shares a bit about each student.  An example: “Elizabeth admitted to us that growing up, her first sexual thoughts were of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”  There is also wordplay involving the football club Arsenal and terms like astoundingly and parse.

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According to the paper, the inspiration for the contest was Pippa Middleton’s bottom and its instant rise to fame at last spring’s royal wedding.  As the intro to the male contest notes, “[T]hat wedding was a year ago, and . . . P. Middy’s once show-stopping rear is frankly so yesterday.  It’s time to find a new bum on which to focus our attentions.”

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Along with oodles of online and outside media attention, criticism has centered on sexual objectification and minority exclusion issues.  A Cambridge student: “This kind of portrayal of women as sex objects not only plays to tired gender stereotypes, but it also reinforces the message that only one kind of beauty is acceptable, and it is a thin, white image.  This is a harmful message to reproduce and one that we ought to be stepping away from.”

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Related

Topless Photo Shoot a First for Cambridge Student Paper

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His Twitter account bio features a poem: “Lookin in the mirror. Checkin My hair. What Kinda shoes have you got on there? Bitch I’m Jamie, and I like lickin’ shoes.”  The “personal interests” on his Facebook page: “Mens boots, Licking shoes, Being exceptionally creepy.”

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He is the Tampa Bay Shoe Licker.  The young man apparently roams the city’s historic Ybor neighborhood looking to lick– yes, lick– the dirtied soles of people’s shoes.

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In a first-person news column published last month in The Hawkeye at Hillsborough Community College, staff writer Danica Jordan describes an encounter with this brazen-tongued mystery man.  It is by far the wackiest story– in a good way– I’ve come across in the student press this past year.  Throughout much of it, I was simultaneously laughing and squirming.

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A snippet:

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I spotted a young man dressed in a concert t shirt and jeans headed toward us, almost running. He was probably around 25, but his face looked innocent, almost child-like. I couldn’t tell from what direction he had come; all I noticed was the huge smile on his face. . . . The unnamed man flirtatiously raised an eyebrow as he glanced up and down [the writer's friend] Drew’s body, stopping at his feet. I laughed at the nervous look on my friend’s face, not familiar with being ogled. ‘Hey man,’ said the stranger, ‘what kinda shoes are those? They’re nice.’ . . . Quicker than I’d ever seen anyone move before, the man dropped to his knees and balanced his weight on his palms as he squatted in front of my friend. He was clearly not phased by the sticky, grimy, possibly urine-soaked pavement of 7th Avenue. Exhibiting unusual strength for such a skinny, petite guy, the man lifted one of Drew’s Nikes. He stuck his tongue out and slowly, almost sensually licked the entire length of the shoe from bottom to top, as if it were a pool of water and he’d been lost in the desert for weeks.

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How are student newspapers faring on Facebook?  From a sheer ‘likes’ perspective, most papers’ popularity on the publicly-traded behemoth is at an all-time high.  Along with Twitter and YouTube (and with a tiny bit of recent competition from Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram), Facebook remains the top social media and content sharing platform utilized by student newspapers nationwide.

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Drake University multimedia journalism instructor Chris Snider has been monitoring student and professional news media Facebook usage and popularity for awhile.  It has been almost exactly a year since he last checked in on student press Facebook ‘likes.’

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Below is a glimpse at how things stand now, specifically the 10 papers with the highest ‘like’ totals.  (If I’ve overlooked a paper, please comment or email me ASAP.)  But first, the award for the funniest/most random student newspaper Facebook cover photo goes to . . . The Central Michigan Life.  (For those glancing at this post on a tiny mobile screen, he’s reading underwater.)

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10 Student Newspapers with Most Facebook ‘Likes’

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1. The Daily Tar Heel, University of North Carolina, 9,681 Likes

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2. The Central Michigan Life, Central Michigan University, 8,200 Likes

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3. The Daily Collegian, Penn State University, 7,408 Likes

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4. The Michigan Daily, University of Michigan, 6,927 Likes

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5. The Indiana Daily Student, Indiana University, 6,337 Likes

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6. The Daily Californian, University of California-Berkeley, 6,202 Likes

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7. The Crimson White, University of Alabama, 6,028 Likes

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8. The Lantern, Ohio State University, 5,499 Likes

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9. The Iowa State Daily, Iowa State University, 5,130 Likes

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10. The Yale Daily News, Yale University, 5,013 Likes

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Late last month, Daniel Drake graduated from Pacific Lutheran University.  It was marked by a commencement ceremony.  Six years ago, he dropped out of school due to low grades.  From his current cap-and-gowned vantage point, he believes that moment deserved a ceremony too.

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As Drake argued in a column in The Mooring Mast, headlined “A Shout-Out to Dropouts,” “[W]hile the graduates are treated as people, the rest of us are treated as statistics.  Every year, analysts write about why some of us failed to complete all four years of our degree.  Nobody writes about all the work we did to make it through one year, or two, or three.  If we celebrate the hard work of those who graduate, why not celebrate that of those who don’t?”

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The type of ceremony Drake envisions is not aimed at “idolizing dropouts,” but acknowledging that the traditional college path is becoming less frequented.

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Prior to his recent graduation from PLU, Daniel Drake served as online editor of The Mooring Mast. (Photo courtesy of Drake.)

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“Most parents expect college to be a four-year financial commitment,” a recent Reuters report confirmed, “yet it has become so common for undergraduates to stretch out their college years that only about a third of students who set out to graduate in four years actually do so.”  The number of students leaving school prior to graduation has actually risen so dramatically in recent years that the U.S. now boasts the highest college dropout rate in the industrialized world.

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According to Drake, honoring student dropouts for work completed, regardless of degree earned, also sends a positive message about the nature of learning itself.

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As he explains in his column, speaking directly to students, “The world doesn’t end if you don’t get it right the first time.  If you’ve just realized you might not be graduating this year as planned, don’t feel ashamed about the things you weren’t able to do.  Instead, congratulate yourself for all the things you’ve accomplished.”

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To read more, click here or on the screenshot below.

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In an op-ed published late last month in The Hoya that I just stumbled upon, a Georgetown University student calls out the private D.C. school’s brain trust for failing to so far launch a full-blown journalism program.

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As rising senior Dan Healy writes at the start of the piece, headlined “Journalism Program a Major Shortcoming” (catch the wordplay?), ”Georgetown offers an impressive array of majors across its four undergraduate schools, including such disparate areas as medieval studies and international political economy.  Yet among all these possibilities, one standard area of study remains conspicuously absent– journalism.”

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Given Georgetown’s size, diverse program base, a student body with a reputation for “civic engagement,” a robust campus media, and its location in a political and news epicenter, the lack of a JOU department, college or even major is surprising.  Dear Lord, the internship and all-star adjunct and guest speaker opportunities alone make it a common sense proposition– not to mention the countless nearby orgs and power-players who might be keen to fund a journalism innovation center or political media 2.0 institute with their name on it.

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GU leaders are apparently somewhat seeing the light.  The school is rolling out its first journalism minor in the fall– an encouraging step but according to Hayes not enough to entice the type of committed, high-achieving j-students the school could be bathed in.

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As he contends, “Establishing a journalism major would also allow Georgetown students to take full advantage of a city that is one of the nation’s preeminent hubs for media activity. The District of Columbia is home to some of the titans of both old and new media, from The Washington Post and the Gallup polling organization to the assortment of new media covering Capitol Hill, yet Georgetown still lacks a journalism major that could have the potential to tap into the wealth of experience and inspiration available in D.C. . . . Georgetown students need and deserve a full journalism major.”

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Earlier this week, The University Press at Florida Atlantic University unleashed a special issue that oozes investigative awesomeness and reveals some unsavory, ironic truths about those in power at the Palm Beach County public school.

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The issue’s aim: providing the down-low on the FAU Board of Trustees, the 13-member body that holds ultimate sway over the university’s infrastructure, finances, and future.  It is an über-newsworthy pursuit, especially impressive given that its principal focus is a set of individuals typically untouched by– and unknown to– the student press.

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Quick, name your college or university president.  Picture his or her face.  Nailed both?  Most likely.  Now, name your school’s trustees.  Pick even one out of a line-up.  Not so much?  Still thinking?  Cue awkward silence, floor-staring.  Exactly.  Yet, in big picture terms, those men and women are more powerful than your president, provost, deans, and tenured faculty, combined.

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UP staffer Karla Bowsher first began “blind backgrounding” the board last spring, amid a sleepless night spurred by “talk of another eight-figure budget cut and rumors of another 15 percent tuition hike” at FAU.  Over the next year, she unraveled “so many bankruptcy filings, foreclosures, liens, and lawsuits in our trustees’ pasts that I needed another researcher [James Shackelford] to get through it all– and an entire issue of the newspaper to cover it all.”

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She also found real and perceived cronyism in the board’s selection, stretching directly to the office of the governor.  She pointed out the board’s lack of diversity.  And she came across actual lies within some members’ “applications or questionnaires they filled out– and submitted to state agencies– when they applied to join the board.”  In this regard, the BOT fully earns the ironic nickname bestowed upon it in the issue: “The Trusty Bunch.“

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Bowsher is a graduating senior and freelance journalist who is deservedly earning a rep as a docs, databases, and records specialist.  This report is top-notch for its reliance on inscrutable forms of evidence, a no-stones-left-unturned investigative mentality, a fearlessness at challenging (self-) important people who almost never receive this type of scrutiny, and an aggressively objective final presentation that requires no sensationalism or speculation.  It simply lays out the truth.

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Along with her work on the UP, Karla Bowsher has written for South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel, The Miami Herald, and The Broward Bulldog.  Photo: Charles Pratt / University Press

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Bowsher’s initial guiding question: Who is really running our university?  If I was an FAU student, my question after checking out the issue: Is this who should be running our university?

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The entire top portion of The Spartan Daily homepage has been rejiggered to deliver news of the death of Dwight Bentel.  It’s a small, fitting tribute.  After all, he’s the reason the paper exists.

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Bentel spearheaded the formation of the San Jose State University student newspaper in 1934.  He also started the SJSU journalism program, now the full-blown School of Journalism & Mass Communications.  To say Bentel had a long career is an understatement– early on, he even wrote about Prohibition.  (As a local NBC affiliate shared: “Bentel said his editor handed him a gun instead of a notebook  when he was writing a story about chasing bootleggers out of town.”)

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Among many other achievements during his time at SJSU, he mentored countless students.  As retired sportswriter Bill Soliday wrote in a Facebook comment beneath a San Jose Mercury News article, echoing many others: “Forever grateful to the man I consider to be the most memorable teacher I ever encountered. A legend of the first order. Like the voice of God.”

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One other memory from a former student: “This man was such a bundle of energy that he never walked but he ran.  He was an Olympian racer of Spartan endurance and set such high standards in developing the working press it left you breathless just to see him in action.”

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My favorite snippet from the many memories featured in the Spartan Daily and other local California media: Once, when challenged by a dean on a story about football players misbehaving that the school wanted squashed, Bentel apparently told him simply, “Stick to deaning.” :)

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