FCCPA Blog

Posting links to Florida community college sites on this site gave me the opportunity to revisit sites that I first looked at when I was preparing my FCCPA convention session on “Is Online for You?”  It seems all are posting print issues on a regular basis.

 InMotion is now hosted on College Publisher and looks great and The Observer is using PDF files of its print version online with a link to breaking news for information between issues.  Kudos to both for new initiatives.

But I’m wondering why more newspapers aren’t making the move to online.  Only eight member newspapers are online.  

And half of our community colleges don’t have newspapers.  Maybe if they knew there were free or cheap alternatives to costly printing, they would start online news sites.

Going online means many new avenues of storytelling become available, from audio and video to photo galleries.  Online means students can get current news quickly, not just once or twice a month. Online means readers can interact with writers, editors and other readers, not just through a letter to the editor, but through a discussion thread or a blog like this one. 

I voiced my frustration recently to Brian Murley, co-creator of Innovation in College Media.  Here was his reply, for all to use – Getting Online Today.

This site is built using WordPress. It’s very easy to use and I built it in less than an hour.  The most time-consuming part was deciding what theme to use!

 So what are you waiting for?  What are your roadblocks to getting online?

Rob Curley, formerly the director of new-media and convergence at the Naples Daily News and now at the Washington Post, was selected as one of “20 under 40″ winners in the NAA’s Presstime Magazine.  You can read his bio and interview here, but I especially like a couple of comments he made: 

“[Bill Snead] emphasized to me that what our industry really is about is connecting with our audience. Technology is nothing more than developing new ways of connecting with our audience and giving them something that they never knew they needed, but love having.

Bill always said we have to give our readers these little gifts and surprises whenever we can. The key is the connection, not the delivery method or the software. With every project, I now ask myself a million times, “How does this connect to our readers and what are they getting out of this?” Taking newspapers into the digital world isn’t about the coolest software; it’s about the coolest connection we can make with our audience.” (Emphasis added.) 

And some more food for thought from the interview:

Newspaper companies should no longer just be in the business of putting news on paper, Curley says. Instead, they should “document the living history of the community and give it to residents however and wherever they want it.”

As we move into a new semester, I will pose two questions to the staff: 

1. Are we connecting with our readers?
2. Are we documenting the living history of the campus community?

Our world of journalism, as we know it, is changing.  Rapidly.

Seemingly overnight, media giant Gannett announced a move to 24/7 Information Centers.  Can you imagine walking into a newsroom that looks like this - Gannett: The Seven Desks 

Even in our own backyards, the role of reporters is changing.  In Fort Myers, reporters have become mojos, or mobile journalists, working on the road, filing several stories a day from laptops in their vehicles.  

At the Pensacola News Journal, reporters are asked to collect audio and video to supplement stories (scroll down to related articles).

How will we, as community colleges, train our future reporters to maintain journalistic integrity and professionalism and still meet not just daily deadlines now, but hourly deadlines as well?  Is it within the realm of our curriculum to teach them how to collect audio and video in a basic reporting class or lab?  Should we?

 What are your thoughts?  Are you experiencing similar change in newsrooms near you?  How are you responding to change?

Welcome to the Florida Community College Press Association blog.  We hope you will visit regularly.  If you would like to be a contributor, contact Chris Drain at cdrain@pjc.edu.