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According to a separate Pitt News report, the reason for the program’s suspension was not its cost ($30,500 a year, taken from the Student Activities Fund) but the “unlimited access” faculty, staff, and Pittsburgh residents had to the papers.  An SGA member: “I think it is worthwhile and definitely something we should continue to have on campus. . . . [But] we don’t want to use the activities fee to fund something that everyone could use.”

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One action being considered is the installation of locked dropboxes holding the papers that can only be accessed by students through an ID card swipe.  The problem, according to the Pitt News, is that this plan has no timetable for being carried out.

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As a portion of the editorial calling for the program’s renewal states, “In the age of The Huffington Post, Google News and other aggregate sites, readers have more news sources at their disposal than ever before.  But not every media outlet is first-rate, and many students might still prefer reading one or two high-quality newspapers– an opportunity the recently halted Collegiate Readership Program afforded. . . . To read the Times in print is to immerse yourself in a rich, well-designed document; to browse the paper’s website is to sample a dozen or so articles, videos and graphics, none of which command your full attention.”

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The piece, published in The YU Beacon at Manhattan’s Yeshiva University, is a chronological account of one female student’s tryst with a male classmate and the shame that accompanies it the next morning.  It is anonymous and appears in a section of the Beacon featuring “literary expression,” meaning it may be semi or fully fictional.

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As one portion reads, “My partner in crime improvises with the room key as a bottle opener and we gorge ourselves on Stella Artois and cable television.  In between swigs, I glance over at him; my cheeks are flushed and my head feels lighter with every drop.  Making him think I’m farther gone than I actually am helps me shut off my conscience when I kiss him hard on the mouth.  That little pest of a conscience is screaming again when he starts taking off my dress, so I shut her up with a last gulp of beer.”

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Overall, as the Times reports, its explicitness has angered the conservative school’s “religious students who consider premarital sex– not just the act but even talking openly about it– well beyond the acceptable bounds of modesty.”

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When the firestorm first sparked, as Wilensky wrote, there was speculation the university would sever its ties to the paper.  Staff have since decided to proactively end the affiliation, losing $500 in related funding.  The news editor and a co-editor-in-chief also quit.

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The Beacon‘s remaining EIC Simi Lampert is standing by the essay, reminding YU students, staff, and alums that while the topic might strike some as sacrilegious, sex is a part of some YU students’ lives: “To all those upset by the article, I apologize.  But I do not regret the decision to post it.  This is the reason the Beacon was founded in the first place– to be a platform for every student, not just the majority.”

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As I write in a new piece for MediaShift, the implications for the news industry and Internet as a whole are enormous. For college media specifically, meters and walls could be a veritable game changer, a final helium burst in their rise to professional press-level prominence- provided, of course, they turn them down.

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The new “walledoffedness” culture coming to online news media provides student outlets with a unique opportunity to grow their Web readership.  My argument is that to attain this growth a few time-tested news-editorial approaches may need to be reconfigured and a commitment to a free, easily accessible Web site should be confirmed.  To read the full piece, click here.

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Answer: All once freelanced or worked full-time for a college media outlet. See, it pays to be part of the student press!

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Like the legends named above, and many past and present professional journos, broadcasting titan Walter Cronkite also began his journalistic sojourn while in school, specifically as a reporter for The Daily Texan.

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As the New York Times reports, in March 1935, an 18-year-old Cronkite interviewed Gertrude Stein for a profile published in advance of her arrival on campus for an event. According to the Times:

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After recording her attire (‘a mannish blouse, a tweed skirt, a peculiar but attractive vest affair, and comfortable looking shoes’), Mr. Cronkite talked with her about the proper role of the writer and the impact of the Great Depression, then in its sixth year. Discussing her craft, Stein told Mr. Cronkite, ‘A writer isn’t anything but contemporary. The trouble is that the people are living Twentieth Century and thinking Nineteenth Century.’

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The Daily Texan has posted the full piece online.

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According to a Gawker report (sent my way by a distressed UF lover), Hailey Mac Arthur stole scraps from four NYT stories covering everything from sheep shearing to homelessness and spun them as her own for publication in The Colorado Springs Gazette.  In an editor’s note, Mac Arthur’s overseer at the Gazette labeled the shoddy journalism a true “breach of trust.”  Here’s an example he gave of her stolen work:

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Mac Arthur story in Gazette, July 2, “Bicycle safety a hit-or-miss proposition in Springs”

From the vantage point of a bicycle, the city presents itself as a panorama passing by at a speed somewhere between the blur outside a car window and the plodding pace of walking.

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Random New York Times story, Oct. 3, 2004, “Spin city“

From the vantage point of a bike, the city presents itself as a savorable panorama passing by at a speed somewhere between the blur outside a car window and the plodding pace of walking.

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Spot the similarities?  Gawker is the first and certainly won’t be the last to make the Mac Arthur-Maureen Dowd comparison.  (For those stuck on no-journalism-allowed-island recently, Dowd faced scrutiny in May for penning a column that contained an eerily similar passage to a piece posted on a popular blog.)

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Here’s Gawker‘s take: ”Perhaps the ultimate irony in all of this is that young Hailey Mac Arthur’s writing seems to have some Maureen Dowd-ish qualities to it, no? Too bad Mac Arthur couldn’t get away with concocting some sort of ridiculous ‘my friend told it all to me over the phone’ excuse like Dowd so famously did back in May when she plagiarized TPM’s Josh Marshall. If there’s any justice in the world maybe the Times will give Hailey Mac Arthur her second chance. After all, everyone does deserve one.”

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According to the bio on Mac Arthur’s blog, (a cached version, since, as Gawker confirmed, she’s privatized the blog and erased her profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn) she’s preparing for a trip to Brazil in the fall as part of a UF advanced journalism practicum.  Interesting side question: Should a student’s j-misdeeds as an intern (while representing the university) impact her class standing or enrollment in any way???

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First, the cliches.  Here’s the opening scene-setter:

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A pizza box and half a dozen laptops lay open in the poster-lined basement lounge of WRPI, the radio station of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.  As a soda machine hummed, students prepared to record a local metal band and debated whether reggae is fundamentally a 1970s style or “transcends the boundaries of time.”  It was the kind of scene that has played out countless times at campus radio stations. . .

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You’re kidding!  A student media area filled with pizza, soda, posters, other clutter, and discussion of off-beat topics?! Maybe I’ve spent too much time in student newsrooms and TV/radio studios in my short time here on Earth, but that description strikes me as more cliche than rain filled with cats and dogs and darkness before the dawn.  Even the start of the nut graph that follows admits it.  Give me something fresh!

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The article then goes on to actually call college radio “an anachronism, an analog remnant in a digital world.”  Like, say, newspapers, primetime TV, John McCain, home phones, non-online dating, and non-laser-surgery eyes?  I literally cannot think of a more overused sentiment in recent years to describe the old-new media divide.  Drop the Shakespeare.  We get it.  It’s old-school.

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The piece also points out that college radio’s new media transitioning can be seen by the fact that some student DJs are also bloggers . . . MUCH LIKE THE REST OF THE POPULATION.  There is no evidence offered whatsoever that the student radioheads keep blogs because they are involved with college radio.  Instead, it’s probably because they’re young, online a lot, can spell WordPress, and want to write about what interests them.

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Next, the counterproductive and scantily-backed-up arguments.  The piece attempts to draw conclusions about a decline in college radio listenership while admitting “[h]ard numbers about ratings for campus radio are scarce.”  Instead, it shows off the only numbers the reporter could find: those touting the downward trend of radio listening overall among the younger generation.  The number is irrelevant.  Just because students are listening to radio in the outside world less does not automatically mean they are listening to college radio less.  As I mentioned in a recent discussion with Center for Innovation in College Media director Bryan Murley, students have said for years that their readership of professional newspapers is down, down, down, but if you asked them most would confirm that they are still picking up their campus newspaper regularly and at times passionately.

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You can’t make an A (what students do with outside media) = B (what students do with campus media) argument here, especially without any reliable, relevant stats.  (And let’s be honest, even the most impassioned student DJ won’t try to convince you that college radio has ever boasted a massive audience, regardless of the decade, i.e. you can’t have a dramatic drop in listeners if you don’t have that many to start with.)

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Finally, the piece first says that college radio stations “no longer enjoy the influence they had” in promoting and discovering new music, which according to the article apparently reached a peak in the 1980s and 1990s.  But it then mentions that, for two of the hottest new indie acts, “college radio played a far greater role in their good fortune than Web sites” and that “[c]ollege radio is more of a real barometer of what people like and what people are listening to than blogs.”  So which is it, still influential or not so much?

Harvard Endowment Fell 22 Percent in Four Months: How is your university faring in the endowment and general donor pool amid the economic turmoil?

Future uncertain for students connected to auto industry: A UWire peek at students involved with a major that might be on a road to nowhere. What is the impact of the auto industry’s woes on the mechanical engineering students and program at your school?

‘Juicy Campus’ Resists Squeeze by Tenn. State: The fight over the proudly rumor-mongering Web site has intensified as of late. What’s the latest gossip about Juicy Campus at your university?

Webcasting Plays Key Role in Chancellor Interviews at University of Tennessee: New media is upending the traditional application process within academia. How is your school joining the Hiring 2.0 bandwagon?

College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.: A New York Times piece posted earlier today that cites a new report finding that “[t]he rising cost of college – even before the recession – threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans.” What’s the response of students and admins.?

The Times most prominently condemned the university’s imposing of a gag order prohibiting all staffers from speaking to Quad News and a written threat admins made against the school’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists: 

Such intimidation does not speak well of Quinnipiac’s commitment to freedom of speech, open-mindedness or academic inquiry. . . . Students say that the university lifted the gag order last week, making it easier for them to interview administrators and athletes. That’s a good start. But Quinnipiac should take the next necessary step and withdraw its threat against the school’s chapter of the professional journalists’ organization—and put it in writing.

The Sophian at Smith College also recently weighed in on the QU-Quad News showdown in a piece wonderfully headlined “Power to the Editorial.”  As it noted,

Since the arrival of the newspaper as a force for change in our society, journalists have adopted the goal of uncovering the truth, despite any obstacles. However, in order for this tradition to continue, freedom of the press needs to be defended, no matter what kind of publication, whether it be The New York Times or The Quinnipiac Chronicle.