Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

This Thanksgiving, Celebrate 1,000 College Problems

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 21, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Madeline Huerta recently celebrated her 1,000th college problem.  As I’ve previously posted, the Boston University student is the creator and overseer of College Problems, an uber-successful Tumblr site that offers undergraduates a spot to vent about everything related to higher ed. that irks or annoys them.

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The user-submitted entries typically run only a sentence or two, almost always with a set-up and a punchline and sometimes without proper capitalization and grammar.

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Four sample problems: “Running out of ways to make Ramen exciting”; “Trying to make new friends because everyone you know is abroad”; “That two-week mark when you stop caring about classes”; and “Tuition increase for a building you’ll never use. Meanwhile your dorm is collapsing.”

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A screenshot sampling of four more:

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In a brief break from the problems posting after her 1,000th entry, Huerta wrote to readers, “I just wanted to send out a mass THANK YOU to everyone who’s made submissions, liked, reblogged, followed, and sent in positive messages today. It honestly means so much that you read the blog (not too seriously, I hope) and let it brighten up your day a little.”

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Related

In the Spotlight: Madeline Huerta, Founder & Overseer, College Problems

College Problems: ‘Everyone’s Got Them. Tell Me Yours’

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Boston College Student Columnist Offers Kanye, Bieber, Kristen Stewart & Other Celebs ‘Unsolicited Advice’

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 29, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Jenna LaConte recently warned Kanye West to steer clear of a romantic relationship with Kim Kardashian. She separately pushed rageaholic R&B singer Chris Brown to move past his feud with rapper Drake.

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She also told Justin Bieber to plead guilty in court and accept jail time for assaulting a photographer — stemming from an alleged incident in May — in order to finally earn the “thug status” that comes with spending time behind bars.

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Bieber, Brown and West did not ask for LaConte’s advice, but that did not stop her from dispensing it.

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“The Unsolicited Celebrity Advice Column” is a weekly summer blog series published by The Gavel, a progressive student newsmagazine at Boston College. LaConte, Gavel‘s culture editor and a junior English and communication double major at BC, has a four-fold aim with the half-serious, half-satiric feature.

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First, she is using the column as a vehicle to indulge her celebrity and gossip news urges.  She is also seeking to provide a fresh, real-world perspective on the Hollywood bubble.  In addition, she is helping to keep Gavel blog content fresh during the summer doldrums, when many student media websites are so stale their homepages sport weeds.  And she is occasionally reminding readers that other individuals are involved in bigger celebrity stories, not just the A-list celebs.

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For example, when news broke about the Miley Cyrus engagement drama, LaConte wrote to Liam Hemsworth — her budding actor fiancé — not Cyrus. Her advice to Hemsworth: Call the whole thing off, fast.  As she wrote him, “Don’t let the lack of brain activity in Hollywood drag you down. Please reconsider this grave mistake. You’re better off having everyone laugh off the short-lived engagement than going down in history as yet another failed celebrity marriage.”

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In the Q&A below, LaConte lays out the scoop behind “Unsolicited Advice,” including how she selects the celebs and the advice she offers them.

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Q: How did the column come about?

A: I write for The Gavel. We pride ourselves on being progressive politically and technologically, meaning we’re able to update online all the time. So as the year came to a close, we were all thinking it would be fun — just as a summer project — if individually we each took on a blog. So, for our next meeting, we were all told to present an idea. My mind instantly went to celebrity news.

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In some ways, it’s a little bit embarrassing because it isn’t of course the most intellectual topic. But if I’m browsing the Internet, I find myself reading celebrity gossip websites.  We’re surrounded by it. We’re all sort of familiar with it.  Reality TV right now, we watch it for the train wrecks. It’s just how I like to unwind, I guess, to read about the train wrecks in Hollywood.

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I then decided the typical kind of news writing form could easily get boring — both for me and readers. So I just thought, “Since we turn to celebrities so often for the train wreck aspect, why don’t I take that and turn it around on the celebrities and pose solutions to their unimaginable problems that we’re always reading about in the headlines?”

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Q: How do you decide who to advise in each post?

A: The way I look at it, you have people like Lindsay Lohan, whose life is falling apart every day. I could write to her, but I’d end up doing it every single week. So I decided instead to go looking for some of the more hidden celebrity gems, coming up with things that aren’t right out there in the forefront of the news or taking something that’s really popular and putting a different spin on it. For example, with John Travolta’s marriage falling apart, I wrote to his wife instead of him.

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Also, I like to stay as current and relevant as possible. I like to be on TMZ [the night before writing each post] so I can have something that’s a bit more recent. Some of the more interesting ones are those you aren’t necessarily thinking about all the time or aren’t all over the radio like the Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes divorce.

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To read the rest of the post, click here or on the screenshot below.

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Jim Romenesko’s ‘Retirement Blog’ is Journalism’s Newest Destination Site

Posted in Journalism, New Media, tagged , , , , on February 2, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

An article of mine focused on “seminal media blogger” Jim Romenesko’s independent site has just gone up on PBS MediaShift.  It includes an interview with Romenesko and the “new Romenesko” Andrew Beaujon, who is assuming a lead role with Poynter’s MediaWire later this month.  Here’s the start of the article below, in hopes of enticing you to click and read the rest.

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Jim Romenesko is having a good time. Lately, the “journalism evangelist,” “KING of the blogosphere,” and “go-to source for news about the news” has been waking up earlier, posting more often, and featuring content he had not felt free to publish for more than a decade.

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In the wake of his abrupt departure from The Poynter Institute late last year, he established an eponymous independent site that has quickly been embraced by media professionals, educators, students, and even a few Facebook spammers worldwide.

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In just over two months and 400 posts, JimRomenesko.com has become the journalism community’s newest destination site. The rapidity of the site’s rise in popularity and influence has even surprised its founder. He is beginning to earn revenue from related advertising, but sees the cash simply as a bonus.

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“I guess in many ways this is my retirement blog,” said Romenesko, 58, in a recent phone chat. “I feel that I can get up and start working when I want to. I can stop when I want to. But it’s been so much fun that I actually get up earlier now than I did when I was employed by Poynter. I enjoy posting on weekends. I don’t see it as work. It’s kind of a hobby now, and it’s fun.”

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The Word Plagiarism

“How did this go off the rails?” That question began his new blog’s opening post, which detailed the collapse of the Poynter Romenesko media blog he had updated for more than a decade.

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A small set of buzzwords and phrases included within the mid-November post sparingly tell the tale: changes to the site, traffic decline, 12 year itch, retirement, doing a media blog on my own, “semi-retirement,” cross post items to Poynter, odd arrangement, smelling bait and switch, the word plagiarism, response was overwhelmingly supportive, called my father, “I resigned from Poynter yesterday,” they were still using my name, cease and desist, Romenesko+ became MediaWire.

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It is his most-commented post so far. “When I wrote that very first post explaining what went down and people saw there was a lot going on and had been a lot going on prior to that, just putting that out helped things die down,” he said. “For me and for readers, I wanted to close the book on that. I’m certainly looking ahead, not back.”

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He said he has been heartened by the high traffic, the enormous level of interactivity, and the longtime readers who have followed him to his new web home.

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One of those readers is Michael Koretzky, a journalist currently serving as director of NYC12, the Spring College Media Convention hosted by the College Media Association.

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“I wasn’t outraged by the Poynter-Romenesko dispute because I never could grasp how that relationship started in the first place,” said Koretzky. “Poynter always reminds me of Mater Christie, the Catholic school I attended in fourth and fifth grades — the education was so much better, but the rules were so much stricter. Romenesko never seemed a good fit for that. Just look at the pictures of the Poynter staff in their tiny little mugshots and compare them to photos of Jim. He looks like a serial killer next to their smiley faces. Jim’s site looks like he writes– it’s simple, easy to read, and doesn’t try to be more than it is.”

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

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College Media Hall of Fame: David Teeghman, Founder, J-School Buzz, University of Missouri (@JSchoolBuzz)

Posted in College Media, Journalism, Journalism Education, Journalist Spotlight, New Media, tagged , , , , on February 1, 2012 | 2 Comments »

The College Media Hall of Fame is a digital enshrinement of individuals, news outlets, and organizations who have made a recent lasting impact on collegemediatopia.  Inductees include standout student journalists, innovative student media entrepreneurs, and impassioned advocates of campus press 2.0.  With a hat tip to the annual Time 100, many of the posts announcing each honoree include a few words of adoration penned by a close friend or colleague.  Next up…

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David Teeghman

Founder and Publisher, J-School Buzz

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J-School Buzz, an independent student blog focused with unblinking intensity on the University of Missouri School of Journalism, awes me.  At the moment, it is the only hyperlocal student blog within collegemediatopia of any significance.

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It continues to break interesting stories and trigger debates of consequence in Columbia, Mo., and beyond.  And it is staffed by students within the Mizzou J-School who are unafraid to doggedly and at times critically report on their own program, for its own good.

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As its editor-in-chief Ali Colwell writes with gusto, “It is not our job to make the journalism school look good.  We are bloggers, always digging for the truth. . . . We want to be a student voice for the Missouri School of Journalism, and we welcome conversation as well as debate.  We want to engage readers and create a site that fosters the dialogue for our amazing school that brings in the best students around.”

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As part of Teach for America, Teeghman is leading middle school reading classes.

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The man behind the Buzz deserves applause, respect, and a hyperlocal blog focused just on his hair.  David Teeghman launched the site in January 2011.  Roughly 13 months later, he can pat himself on the back for an accomplishment most j-students never muster: an actual start-up success story, one that has outlived his time in school.

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Teeghman, now a Mizzou grad, is currently taking part in Teach for America in Indianapolis, while J-School Buzz continues to be a player in the student media arena nationwide.  Just yesterday, its post about the Mizzou J-School Facebook account not actually being officially aligned with the school prompted a response from the school’s planning and communications director on Romenesko.

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For his courageousness, spirit of innovation, entrepreneurialism, and hyperlocal A-game, Teeghman rightfully earns a spot in the College Media Hall of Fame.  Frankly, it’s long overdue. :)

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“A Rising Journalist with a Vision”

By Claudia Tran

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Most of my interaction with Teeg was not during regular daylight hours or even face-to-face.  Most of the time, it was between 2 and 4 in the morning and we were communicating via Facebook, Twitter and text messaging, sometimes all of the above. In all honesty, it was usually the moments when I was right about to silence my phone or shut off the computer that the text or the chat with a new piece of advice or demand came from him, greeted with a half-groan and an eye-roll from myself [during her time as J-School Buzz editor-in-chief].

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But it was during these times I had the privilege of getting to know a rising journalist with a vision.  Certainly not liked by all– and that has been the topic of many of our conversations– it is difficult even for his most passionate, fake-Twitter-account-creating critics to deny that Teeg is not only a talented journalist, but also innovative and dedicated.

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Sure, he calls me Tranny (not only that, he encourages the world to) and enjoys likening me to a “cat continuously scared by its shadow,” but I always knew Teeg had my back and only wanted me to learn as much from the experience as he has.  He’s like a journalism equivalent of a big brother.  From him and his website I gained trade secrets far more valuable than anything a textbook or class lecture could have taught me.  He put 110 percent into J-School Buzz and never looked back.  He’s rolled with the punches, had successes as well as failures, and continues to push the boundaries in the name of our education.

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Best of luck in the future Teeg.  May you continue to be controversial– we know you will be, and remember that JSB will always stand behind you.

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Tran is a former J-School Buzz editor-in-chief.

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10 Early Observations About JimRomenesko.com, Journalism’s Newest Destination Site (@romenesko)

Posted in Journalism, New Media, tagged , , , , , on January 24, 2012 | 2 Comments »

In the wake of his expedited departure from Poynter late last year, Jim Romenesko has established an eponymous independent site that has been passionately embraced by many in the journalism community.  Even with his high-profile name recognition, the rapidity of the site’s rise in popularity and influence is startling.

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Below are 10 early observations about the roughly two-month-old JimRomenesko.com:

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1) Romenesko is blogging with a vibrancy and candor that was missing from his latter days at Poynter (when, frankly, he had all but disappeared).  He seems to be inserting more of his personal voice into posts, including periodic giggly headlines and other dollops of dry wit.  While occasionally veering too much toward informality, the writing overall is indicative of a man who is clearly enjoying what he is doing.  My guess: That enjoyment is being shared by readers like me.

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2) Reader interaction is up, up, UP.  He is basing numerous posts on interesting reader emails, inserting lots of site and Facebook comments in ‘reaction’ posts, and including lots of tweets and other web chatter from the newsy masses.  The result is a site seemingly more attuned to the news media sentiments of the moment.

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3) Romenesko is fast becoming a social media machine.  He tweets, posts and interacts on Facebook, and has made Vadim Lavrusik a happy man by utilizing Facebook comments on all posts along with regular site comments.  (His Google+ presence is barebones at best.)  One of my favorite regular posts is the daily links rundown of what he’s tweeted but not blogged about.

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4) He also appears to be morphing into a weekend blogger.  While not yet establishing a reliable rhythm to his Saturday and Sunday routine (some weekends it’s been very light or basically nonexistent while others it has been quite steady), he does seem to be slowly embracing the 24/7/365 blogging mentality.  If nothing else, it is one more way to gain an edge over his previous employer/current competition.

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5) The site is fun to look at!  Romenesko has begun featuring images in earnest– a mix of logos, screenshots, headshots, Creative Commons standbys, and primary docs.  It adds liveliness to the scroll-and-browse proceedings.  Only slightly disconcerting observation: unattributed headshots are popping up evermore as of late.

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6) His value is evermore as a primary source.  His email-for-a-reaction-MO was entrenched at Poynter, but he is definitely reaching out much more regularly to the individuals and outlets he blogs about– and receiving subsequent responses at a surprisingly high rate.  And it might simply be circumstantial, but the responses have been more interesting!

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7) Ads are beginning to appear.  Some scream bush-league, interspersed with a few biggies such as AT&T.  Bottom-line curiosity: Is he making any money at all, or anything close to what he was pulling in at Poynter?  Doubtful, but of course he’s still in the scrappy insurgency phase.

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8) Three things I personally don’t like: the headlines pushed to the side; the muted mellow blah gold/mauve headline and hyperlink color; and the lack of posts available for scrolling on each page (Poynter’s MediaWire doubles Romenesko’s posts-per-page count).  These are all minor complaints.

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9) There is still an inside-the-castle-walls feel to the whole shebang at times, based on what he writes about and who he sources.  (Apparently the “new Romenesko” will “cast a pretty wide net . . . [that includes] community media, ethnic media, overseas media, blogs and online publications.”)  But Romenesko is noticeably writing more about student media and journalism education issues.  I do recommend expanding the reach to more of the blogosphere and social media realm.

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10) The site’s tagline states boldly: “A Blog About Media and Other Things I’m Interested In.”  I have yet to determine what else he is interested in. :)  At this point, everything he’s blogged about is focused squarely on all-things media.

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Lingering Question) Prior to the Poynter plagiarism-charge craziness, Romenesko had stated he was planning to move on from daily journalism news aggregating.  Is that still the short-term or long-term plan???

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Related

A Strange, Sad Day in Journalism: Romenesko’s Resignation

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Awake at 1:11 a.m.? Read The Columbia Daily Spectator

Posted in College Media, Journalism, New Media, Student Newspaper, tagged , , , , , on January 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

The One Eleven, part of The Columbia Daily Spectator‘s “Spectrum” blog network, is built atop students’ penchants for being awake at all hours and forever web browsing to avoid schoolwork.  Each morning, at exactly 1:11 a.m., overseer Stephen Snowder provides a recap of the world in quick bits, sometimes serious and sometimes wacky.  It appears to exist as the sarcastic younger brother of College Daybreak, a daily email breaking down world events in similarly easy-to-digest chunks.

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Snowder explains the blog’s existence at the beginning of each post, noting simply, “It’s late.  You’re up.”

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Dan at AEJMC Conference: Come See Me in St. Louis

Posted in College Media, Journalism, Journalism Education, tagged , , , , , on August 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Like many journalism educators, I’m heading this week to St. Louis for the annual Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference.  I’m presenting twice, including at the gathering’s sole college media session.  Below is info on both sessions.  If you find yourself in St. Louis, stop by the Renaissance Grand Hotel to say hi.

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Wednesday, August 10th, 3:15 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.

Session: Issues Facing the Campus Press

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Moderating/Presiding: Brian Steffen, Simpson

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Covering Hate on Campus: A Case Study, Caley Cook, Allegheny College

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Evolving Medium: A College Newspaper Works to Adapt to Changing Readership Habits via Print Design, Multimedia Inclusion, and Online Promotion, Sonya DiPalma and Michael E. Gouge, North Carolina at Asheville

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Students 2.0: College Media Moguls who are Changing Journalism and the World (Wide Web), Dan Reimold, Tampa

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Credentialing of Campus Media Advisers: Is There a Doctor in the Newsroom?, Carol Terracina_Hartman, Bloomsburg of Pennsylvania and Robert G. Nulph, Lewis University

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Friday, August 12th, 1:45 p.m. to 3:15 p.m.

Session: Geeks – The New Journalists

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Moderating/Presiding: John Kerezy, Cuyahoga College

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Panelists:

Toni Albertson, Mt. San Antonio College (journalism entrepreneurship and self-learning)

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Brian Steffen, Simpson College  (“Twitter and the Accidental Journalism Student”)

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Mitzi Lewis, Midwestern State (data journalism)

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Dan Reimold, Tampa (blog entrepreneurs and content farms)

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Mashable: Onward State at PSU a “Sociological Petri Dish”

Posted in College Media, Future of Journalism, Journalism, New Media, tagged , , , , , , on March 24, 2010 | 6 Comments »

Onward State‘s legend grows.  A new Mashable post about the Penn State University online outlet describes it as nothing less than a “rogue campus blog” and a “sociological Petri dish”- one that is at the center of an epic “old/new media rivalry.”  The new write-up follows a recent Chronicle of Higher Education report that anointed Davis Shaver, Onward State‘s co-founder, as the potential “future of alternative student media.”

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The most fascinating assertion of the Mashable breakdown is that this old/new rivalry is not simply the Onward State online whiz kids against the digital immigrants running professional media, but against the traditional press run by their peers- in this case, PSU’s award-winning Daily Collegian.

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Mashable paints a portrait of Onward State as the embodiment of Journalism 3.0- engaging in constant chatter with readers on Twitter and pushing for uber-user-generated awesomeness; boldly leaping into the link culture even when it requires a shout-out to its competitors; and treating newsrooms as virtual, not physical, meeting spaces.

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As Shaver tells Mashable’s Greg Ferenstein, “Our office really consists of my dorm room, I guess. We don’t have any kind of physical structure, so we use [Google] Wave as our virtual newsroom.” Ferenstein continues: “Throughout the day, Shaver and his team monitor several waves at once, each tailored for a different department. In a single browser tab, Shaver has a unique eagle’s-eye view of the entire newsroom. In real-time, his editorial team can toggle between multiple conversations or throw an idea out to the crowd for greater perspective.”

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The Daily Collegian, by contrast, is more reserved on social networking spaces; focused on reporting depth more than delivering “short bursts of information”; against competitor-linking; and still in favor of the face-to-face staff interaction and editorial workflow that only those crazy nights in a newsroom can foster.

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What I like is that Ferenstein ultimately does not judge.  Onward State is certainly sold as sexy, but he acknowledges that online student outlets’ overall “flash-bang success” so far is not even close to supplanting campus papers’ century-long triumph.  As he notes, “a comparison of the world views of two camps of student journalists . . . portends a long war to come.” I’m personally not convinced it is a war as of yet.  At present, the camps are simply wonderful complements to one another, with readers reaping the spoils of more news grabbed and delivered in more ways than ever before.

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Student Blogs “Determined to Reinvent College Journalism”

Posted in College Media, Future of Journalism, Journalism, New Media, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 21, 2010 | 1 Comment »

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.)

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In the Spotlight: College Fashion Founder Zephyr Basine

Posted in College Media, Future of Journalism, Journalism, Journalist Spotlight, New Media, tagged , , , , , , on January 12, 2010 | 5 Comments »

Zephyr Basine is a candy fiend who considers vanilla cupcakes (with extra frosting) manna from heaven and Sour Patch Kids fit to rule the world. She is also “a fan of fearless style” whose name has become synonymous with College Fashion.

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Basine started CF as a personal blog while an undergrad at UMASS Amherst, quickly spinning it into “a worldwide student-run online fashion magazine.”  As she recalls, “I created College Fashion in March of 2007 because I loved reading fashion blogs but couldn’t find any that were aimed specifically at college students. All my favorite fashion sites and magazines catered either to middle-aged women or 16 year olds in high school.  I started this website to fill that need. It began as a fun hobby but it’s grown into a full time job and then some!”

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The blog is now not just a trendsetter (the first fashion blog by college students, for college students) but a brand name, identified to me by several fans simply by its acronym. For her fearless style, new media savvy, and entrepreneurial spirit, the CF founder rightfully earns a spot in the CMM spotlight.

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Zephyr Basine, College Fashion Founder & Editor-in-Chief

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Write a six-word memoir of your CF experience so far.

Doing what you love is bliss.

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What is the secret to your blog’s success?

CF is successful because we are different from every other site out there, in that we’re the only fashion blog devoted solely to college students. While most fashion blogs focus on teens in high school or 30-somethings who can afford couture, our content is written by and for our reader, the average college girl. We always keep her needs and preferences in mind, and always strive to be helpful, cutting-edge, and relevant.

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Making our readers happy is our marketing strategy: I’d say 90% of our growth has come about through word of mouth. I started CF in early 2007 and it’s grown like crazy since then, with pretty much zero promotion from me. We now receive over one million pageviews per month, and that number is constantly growing. It’s very exciting and surreal!

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When did you realize CF was becoming big?

I first realized the site was successful when we started averaging over 20 comments per blog post. Comments are really important on blogs because they show that people care enough about what you wrote to tell you their thoughts. But the majority of people don’t comment on posts. So comments are an easy way to see how successful a blog is. It’s easy for sites that want to claim they’re popular to lie about traffic numbers, but you can’t fake an engaged community. It was only when we started to command a very large readership that we started to see lots of comments on every post, and that’s the first time I noticed the site was a success.

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Standout CF memory.

The biggest standout memory for me is definitely being invited to attend New York Fashion Week this past September. It was so amazing to cover the runway shows up-close, instead of just checking out the clothes on a computer screen. Going to fashion week has been my dream for as long as I can remember, and I’m so excited to attend NYFW again in February!

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What is the toughest part of running a high-traffic daily blog with staff?

Making myself STOP working on CF is definitely the toughest part of my job. I have always been a bit of a workaholic and since I graduated college 6 months ago, I’ve been working on the site full-time. The phrase 9-to-5 means nothing to me. My work hours are basically from 7 AM to 10 PM, 7 days a week, with the occasional break to go shopping or maybe eat something. Forcing myself to only work for one hour on Christmas was one of the most difficult things I’ve done, business-wise, this year. Crazy, maybe, but I love my job.

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How did your love of fashion start?

I’ve always been interested in fashion. I can remember drawing clothing designs everywhere, spending hours coming up with new outfits, and constantly playing dress-up as a kid. As I got older, I began to see clothes as a means of self-expression, and fell in love with the idea of fashion as an art form. Fashion is about more than just an LV monogram on a bag: it’s transformative. Fashion allows you to be whoever you want to be, to express what’s on your mind, or even just escape from the monotony of everyday life. Above all, fashion helps make people feel good about themselves. I think that’s something worth appreciating.

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How about your love of journalism?

While I’ve been an avid reader of the New Yorker and the Times since high school, my love of journalism really started when I was in college. I took a bunch of journalism classes after I started CF, and they really made me take my site and my writing more seriously. While I’m not sure I’d say that the topics we cover on College Fashion fall into the category of “serious journalism” (it’s not like we’re saving lives), I still have an immense amount of respect for the field.

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What advice do you have for current j-students looking to start a high-impact blog or simply up their Web game?

Do something new or don’t bother. I created College Fashion because there were no sites out there that catered to college girls interested in fashion, and people love it because it’s different other fashion blogs. If you want to be successful, you have to be original. There are a million blogs out there- how will yours be unique? Copying someone else will NEVER lead to success. Everyone will always see you as a wannabe- not exactly a good branding strategy. Sure, it’s easier to take someone else’s idea and pass it off as your own, but if you do, people will either see right through you or simply ignore you. Although it’s more difficult, being original is the way to succeed.

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You wake up in ten years. Where are you and what are you doing?

The future is an open book and I love it that way! But my best guess: I’m living in New York, LA, or possibly Paris. As for what I’m doing? I’m still running my own company, a global media dynasty focusing on multi-channel fashion and lifestyle-related content. My job is non-boring, and I’m loving every minute of it. I have a stay-at-home husband, 2 kids, and an ever-expanding Chanel collection.

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Schools Fight Back!: James Madison Charges Student Journalists, Butler Sues Student Blogger

Posted in College Media, Free Press Fights, Journalism, Journalism Ethics, New Media, tagged , , , , , , , on October 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

At James Madison University, it started with a peeping tom- an alleged creep watching girls in dorm showers. It’s now ending with administrative idiocy. A student reporter with The Breeze, JMU’s campus newspaper, went to a JMU dorm recently to speak with students about a reported shower stalker. An RA became nervous and asked the reporter to leave. The Breeze EIC came by as back-up. So did the hall director. Now, as the paper and the Student Press Law Center report, the EIC and reporter are being charged with “trespassing, disorderly conduct and non-compliance with an official request.”

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Shower Head Water Drops EXPLORE 7-26-09 4 by stevendepolo.

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My take: Slap the shower stalker with those charges, not dedicated student journos just doing their job! It’s a dorm, not a sanctuary. And these are not scary outsiders invading students’ private space. Dear lord, they are journalist peers. This is power abuse, against the spirit (and most likely also the letter) of the law. It’s also incredibly bad PR. How can someone at JMU not realize that? SPLC attorney advocate: ”It’s an action so contradictory to the ordinary meaning of the First Amendment that it’s astonishing they haven’t backed down from it yet. A mistake this obvious shouldn’t take this long to get corrected.” JMU professor: “It’s very ironic we have this situation at an institution named after James Madison, who has been labeled the father of the Constitution.”

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The Butler case is more complicated, and frankly I do not know where I stand here. The *very* barebones basics, as reported with much more meaty goodness by Inside Higher Ed: Butler University is suing one of its own students for an anonymous blog he kept starting last fall that bad-mouthed various administrators to the point of what the school is calling defamation and libel. This one is tricky, however, because the student is a son/stepson of two Butler faculty members and originally started the blog (under the creative moniker “Soodo Nym”) when he became upset about some insider shenanigans allegedly affecting his stepmother’s position as chair of Butler’s School of Music.

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From the snippets provided by Inside Higher Ed, no statements appear to come close to being libelous or defamatory  (although there were some random e-mails the student sent to admins. that seem a bit more troublesome). And I do think the school is overreacting and bringing unnecessary levels of attention to what is obviously a huge amount of inner turmoil on campus.  But my Balloon-Boy-cynicism starts kicking in when I read that the student’s parents claim they had no clue their son was writing a regular attack-blog against people who apparently are the parents’ sworn school enemies (or at least with whom they had a falling out).  This mess has TV-movie-of-the-week written all over it. (To the wonderfultastic Renee Petrina at Bowling Green: Send the best related editorial your students create and I’ll check it out and maybe post it!)

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Student Newspaper Has Scoop on Chicago Racism Incident

Posted in College Media, Journalism, New Media, Student Newspaper, tagged , , , , , on October 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

The Student Life at Washington University in St. Louis is using its student connections and new media savviness to cover the Chicago bar racism incident in-depth and from numerous angles. They have posted the insta-famous Rejected, Admitted photos and had their opening story on the alleged blow to Civil Rights picked up by HuffPo and a host of other national outlets.

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Seniors Regis Murayi (left) and Jordan Roberts (right)wear the same pair of jeans. Murayi was told he could not enter a Chicago bar because he violated its ban on baggy jeans. He then switched jeans with Roberts, and Roberts was admitted into the bar. Murayi says the bar discriminated against him because he is black. (Courtesy of Fernando Cutz)

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The newspaper has run a number of stories documenting the reactions of students and the school chancellor, along with covering a campus “town hall-style forum” addressing the incident’s implications.  I am especially impressed by the paper’s town hall live blog.  Most live blogs are utter crapola, attempting to capture too little, too soon (an Entertainment Weekly Oscar ceremony live blog earlier this year literally featured items such as “Tom Cruise walks to podium.”) The StudLife LB, by comparison, is perfectly spaced out.  It offered updates about every five minutes- enabling fully-formed sentences, context (even mini-headers), and some actual insight! Bravo.

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Campus Newspaper Blog Shares Student’s Swine Flu Battle

Posted in College Media, Journalism, New Media, Student Newspaper, tagged , on September 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

I’ve seen blogs in my life- great blogs; middling blogs; blogs of towering mass appeal; blogs that make the phrase inconsequential irrelevance not sound redundant; blogs about exotic food, a person’s mood, a church bingo group, President Obama, Hello Kitty, and being a working mother. I have never come across a blog like this.

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It is built atop a disease sporting two letters interspersed with a repeating number: H1N1. “The Swine Flu Diaries” is a “slightly morbid, but still funny” blow-by-blow account of one student’s fight with swine flu. SFD is an official blog of The Seahawk, the campus newspaper at UNC-Wilmington, arriving at a time of heightened sensitivities toward H1N1 at the school, after “an outbreak of flu-like illness” affected hundreds of students.  It also comes amid a semester’s start in which Center for Innovation in College Media director Bryan Murley says there is not enough student press coverage of the disease.

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It is posted atop a very basic WordPress template, penned by student Lisa Hyunh. In three lengthy entries so far, Hyunh has reflected in memoir form upon her H1NI symptoms, initial diagnosis, treatment-in-progress, and attempts at avoiding exposing others.  As her “Day 2″ entry began:

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2:00 AM: Woke up finding myself covered in a thick layer of sweat. Had brief, OMG, panic attack. Drank a bottle of water in one gulp, wiped off my forehead, then rolled over and decided to worry about it later.

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10:00 AM: Realized that freak sweating incident was probably body’s way of fighting off the fever, because unlike yesterday, I don’t have weirdo chills anymore. Hooray!!! Progress is being made!

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In her latest entry, Huynh even posted a mock obituary, prefaced by the simple lively statement “NOTICE: Did not die.” It was heartening to read- for her sake certainly, but also for the paper. Why? Because the paper has a terrific new blog going. Now the only worry is what to do with the blog once she’s back to feeling fine. :-)

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25 Random Things About Modern College Media: Part 3

Posted in College Media, Free Press Fights, Future of Journalism, Journalism, New Media, Student Newspaper, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2009 | 1 Comment »

My contribution to the now way-too-popular “Random” list phenomenon continues below with Part 3 of “25 Random Things About Modern College Media.”  (Also see Part 1 and Part 2.)  As promised, today’s segment is all about the tough love, presenting some of the harsher truths about 21st-century collegemediatopia.  First up…

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11) Student media online are still in a state of shovelware and disrepair.  Forget the biggie publications for a moment, with their Weberrific, tricked-out WordPress pages.  The truth: A majority of media outlets at smaller schools and many schools outside the states have Web sites that make my new media blood curdle.  They are amateur-ish, ill-designed, static, burdened with text, lacking images, and an absolute affront to link journalism.  Worse yet, some outlets have no Web presence at all or scant efforts, such as a site housing PDFs of past print issues.

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12) TWEET, TWeet, tweet…… The Twitter scene has flat-lined among student media overall after a wave of excitement months back when a bunch of outlets started accounts.  Only a few outlets use it for anything more than advertising their stories.  The question: Has it simply not caught on yet or has it been a bit over-hyped and is not really that necessary for student news outlets day to day?

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13) Is that a blog I see before me? Where are the blogs?  A recent Editor & Publisher piece predicted that journalism’s future will include the emergence of ‘beat blogging,’ or a reporter’s 24-7 coverage of a specific news area using all forms of media for presentation and essentially building a niche blog within his/her news outlet’s site.  This is NOT happening en masse in the land of college media as of yet.  While there are a few notable exceptions, I remain shocked, SHOCKED, at the lack of blogs among established SMOs (student media outlets).  Many j-students blog on their own, but it’s not being incorporated into the media outlets at which they work (again, certainly exceptions).  We are all praying to the micropayment Gods right now, but let’s be honest: Individual stories will not be what keep people coming back to our sites.  Bylines are no longer enough.  Readers want to see quality content delivered atop a personality that they relate to or enjoy (or even passionately hate).

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14) Most student publications still lack independence.  College media staffers of past generations fought for freedom and some earned it.  Their efforts remain iconic.  But liberty and justice for all student pubs have not been realized.  Collegemediatopia has come a long way, but far too many outlets are still beholden and at times smothered by their school sponsorship.  The recent MTSU mess is an example of why such a situation can be catastrophic: One day the admins decide pulling $100,000 from The Sidelines budget might be a good thing.  If the decision passes, boom, done, the print paper is gone.  And there’s basically nothing student staffers can do about it.

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15) Student news media still suffer from SOS SASS (Same Old Stories, Semester After Semester, Syndrome).  As I have written before, there are simply some stories that on a scroll through the archives of any student media outlet pop up again and again and again, sometimes with a fresh spin (although many times, not so much), but always with the same core issue or topic intact.  Why are we covering the same stories over and over and over?  I understand student readers graduate and staff turnover at SMOs is high and knowledge of past issues is not a priority, but something needs to be done to break out of writing yet again about the debate club’s regional tournament appearance or the annual sorority Easter egg hunt.  The problem is the scrapbook journalism mentality still pervading many SMOs.  We must refrain from writing so many stories about ‘official’ events simply because they happen and there are 11.5 people involved in them who will care to read a recap.  If there was ever a time for better between-the-lines, out-of-the-box reporting, it is now.

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Stay tuned for Part 4 next week, when I promise I’ll be more optimistic!  :-)

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“Student Media Voter Fraud?”

Posted in Journalism, New Media, tagged , , , , , , , on February 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

May the best campus blog win!  Or . . . not.  “Paper Trail” guru Allison Go is alleging that the fix is in with voting in the U.S. News & World Report “Best Alternative Media Outlet” contest.

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http://www.usnews.com/blog_dbimages/93/PaperTrail.jpg

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She calls out a pair of blogs, one at Middlebury College and one covering a single dorm at Yale University, for having suspiciously high voting totals.  For example, Middblog at Middlebury has “almost twice as many votes as it has students.”  A post on Middblog encourages readers: “[K]eep voting, but keep the hacking out of this, please!”

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The problem, of course, is the open, honor-system set-up of the contest, making results about as reliable as an online CNN reader poll.  As one commenter to Go’s post noted: “I can’t believe anyone decided to read each blog and pick which one they liked best rather than just blindly vote for the one at their school.”  To me, it’s not about the winner.  It’s just nice to see a few good student blogs earn some recognition!  Btw, my vote: The Daily Clog, a standout blog I’ve written about previously.

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