Category: College Media

Cyber security issues hit too close to home

By Carolyn Levin 

As anyone who has advised a college newspaper knows, you never really get a vacation, even during the summer months when you publish less and may not be paid. Which is why, when I returned from a week away in early August (during which I really, truly tried to disconnect), I was not altogether surprised to discover that our newspaper website had been infected with a virus.

And, not just any little virus. When I opened the site on my first day back, just to take a look while starting to plan for the fall semester, the entire screen went red, with a warning notice, “ZEUS VIRUS DETECTED.”

Nothing subtle about that.

Continue reading “A Cautionary Web Tale”

Dart Center provides sort of support important to journalists

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of the Columbia Journalism School,  has posted a series of links on how  journalists can promote and practice self-care and peer support.

Doing so, the center notes, helps protect journalists’ health and well-being and assists them in “staying resilient” in the face of pressures that may arise from reporting on difficult topics.

The resources are applicable to professional and college media.

The introduction by the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and the links to myriad resources follow.

Like emergency workers and first responders, journalists have begun to recognize the need for safeguards and increased peer support to ensure their health, well-being and ability to do their jobs effectively. Continue reading “Self-care and peer support”

College journalists provide multi-media coverage 

But the student journalists, like their peers on other campuses covering the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, hit the ground running.

Continue reading “Assignment solar eclipse”

Adviser reflects on 23 years in the game

And sometimes, we may forget that students arrive with life experiences, and as a result, may handle changes and challenges more readily than we might expect.

Continue reading “Advising world full of surprises…”

Lighting it up — Journalism as a conversation at the private university

By Matthew Salzano
and Joanne Lisosky
Pacific Lutheran University

Abstract — Student journalists at private universities do the hard work of turning the lights on in the darkened, pseudo-public spheres on their campus. Without a clear idea of who is obligated to be the teller of unsavory truths on the private university’s campus, student media must often take up the torch. Building on Jurgen Habermas’s and Alexander Kluge’s work on the “public sphere” and Doreen Marchionni’s “journalism as a conversation,” student media publications can be examined for their coorientation, informality, and interactivity. Using two stories from the student media of Pacific Lutheran University as a case study illustrates how a robust student journalism outlet is a vital component of initiating important conversations in the public sphere of the private university. This investigation includes suggestions for implementing these strategies at other private universities. Continue reading “Research (Vol. 54) — Joining a conversation at private schools”

150 members provide information on budgets, locations and operations

Special to College Media Review

A benchmark survey of members of the national College Media Association provides snapshots of how student print, broadcast and web media operate, how they’re supported, where they’re located, and how many student and professional staff they employ, among other findings.

“Many of our members routinely ask questions on our listserv about school demographics. That prompted the board to recognize the need to compile this sort of information and make it available to our membership,” said Rachel McClelland, vice president for CMA Member Services.

The association conducted the online survey in April and early May 2017. A total of 150 respondents participated, but the goal is to gain a broader response with future surveys, McClelland said.

CMA President Kelley Lash said the survey helps the organization answer questions, track trends and make predictions, but it is not comprehensive.

Continue reading “Benchmark survey provides snapshots of college media”

From the editor’s desk

Print and broadcast journalists from around the country were among 2017 commencement speakers.

Speaking to graduates of Tuft’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, NBC chief correspondent Richard Engel said, in part: “What is the good news? You have to be the good news,. We can’t be complacent, and you especially can’t be complacent, because we can’t afford it. We have to work hard to defend human rights around the world and the freedom of the press in general.”

Brooke Baldwin, a CNN anchor and 2001 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill’s journalism school, encouraged UNC graduates to dream and “learn their worth.”

For a look at what Engel, Baldwin and other journalists said the 2017 college graduates, a sampling follows, along with a Q&A The Daily Tar Heel did with Baldwin in January 2017, when she was slated for the 2017 commencement address.

• The Truth Under Assault | Tufts Now
• now.tufts.edu/articles/truth-under-assault

Continue reading “‘Tis Season for Commencement Addresses”

Floyd Abrams’ latest book compares free speech laws in United States and elsewhere

Reviewed by Carolyn Schurr Levin

Attorney Floyd Abrams, who represented The New York Times in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case and is described by the Columbia Journalism Review “as the country’s leading First Amendment litigator,” has published a new book: “The Soul of the First Amendment.”

In 2013, Abrams, senior counsel at Cahill Gordon & Reindell LLP in New York, published “Friend of the Court: On the Front Lines with the First Amendment.”  In 2006, Abrams wrote “Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment,” which focused on cases with which he’d been involved.

“The Soul of the First Amendment,” a 150-page book  published April 25, 2017, may be Abrams’ most significant yet. Abrams focuses on why freedom of speech matters and compares U.S, First Amendment laws with laws governing free speech in other democratic nations. Abrams also looks at “how very much more protective of freedom of speech we are than other democratic nations by insisting on what they view as our rather manic devotion to it.”

Continue reading “Book Review — ‘Soul of the First Amendment’”