How Student Journalists Use Email in the Newsroom

Sara Baker Netzley
Bradley University 

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Abstract 
This article examines the way in which student journalists use email on the job. College students working at campus newspapers across the country participated in an online survey asking them how often they use email to conduct certain newsgathering tasks, including using email to conduct interviews with sources. It also asked about their perceptions of the quality of such interviews and their use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The findings could have implications for how these students will conduct themselves in professional settings upon graduation and how journalism educators should approach this topic in the classroom.

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Efforts to serve their communities strengthening

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Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series examining the state of college media advising. The first part discussed the role of the adviser, salary/compensation packages and job status. This part profiles student media operations, including demographics, budgets, financing support, and staffing.

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By Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver
Associate Editor, CMR

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At no time in the evolution of college student media has change been so rapid or provided so many questions and challenges as today. Nor is any media operation immune from the effects of this change.

Newspapers command the status of the most numerous of campus student media, and, as such, have been affected to a greater extent by the changes in the way we deliver information today, just as professional newspapers have faced growing challenges.

Caroline Little, CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, commented, “Newspapers continue to command a huge audience and remain the most-trusted source of news and information. While that will not change, there has been a key shift in the way information is delivered and audience is engaged” (Little, 2014).

Continue reading “Research (Vol. 52): Campus media reflect changing information landscape”

Is there a doctor in the newsroom?

Carol Terracina-Hartman
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Robert G. Nulph
Missouri Western State University 

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Abstract 
This study looks at campus media programs nationwide, focusing on the roles of campus media advisers and skills instructors and their credentials and relationships with award-winning program. Data show a strong majority of advisers leading award-winning programs have 15+ years working in professional media. Additionally, non-terminal degree holders teach 67 percent of skills classes related to campus media participation. But, the literature indicates university administrations often sacrifice professional media experience for doctorates in advertising for new hires. As survey responses and prior research indicate, increasing numbers of advisers compose their own job descriptions; data collected in this new line of research has potential to alter administrative definitions and classifications of adviser and skills instructor positions.

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Faring Well Despite Uncertain Times

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Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two-part series on college media advising. This first article discusses the role of the adviser, salary/compensation packages and job  characteristics. Part 2 will appear next week and profiles student media operations, including demographics, budgets, financing support, and staffing.

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By Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver
Associate Editor, CMR

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As the song says, “The times they are a-changin’”(1964). And that is true of the college and university student media scene as well.

The three decades since this survey was first conducted have witnessed tremendous changes in the way student media advisers do their jobs and in the way the media themselves deliver the message. The biggest change, of course, is in the media themselves which these individuals advise.

In order to trace those changes, over the past three decades the College Media Association has regularly surveyed its membership to provide longitudinal data on the role, responsibilities, working conditions, compensation and status of college and university student media advisers in the U.S. These surveys request data about the media operations they advise as well. This is the eighth survey in that series; the first was in 1984, followed by replications roughly every four years up to this one in 2014. Continue reading “Research (Vol. 51): College Student Media Advisers Fare Well”