Tales From the Newsroom: Stop the Web server!
Can an online-only student newspaper do the same job as a print one?
It was odd visiting my old college haunts with friends this past weekend, and not seeing any copies of the campus newspaper where we all worked together 40 years ago.
Like many publications, the Daily Aztec has gone online-only.
Talk about needing word of mouth advertising!
When I arrived as a freshman, shortly after sliced bread was invented, every entrance to campus had two or three wire racks with the latest issue. One quite literally could not come on campus without being introduced to the Daily Aztec. We had a student radio station, KCR, and a literary journal (the name of which eludes me, even though I was on staff one semester), but you had to get clued in to even know they existed.
The Daily Aztec was ubiquitous on campus — and again, it was because you couldn’t go more than 50 feet without seeing one of our display racks.
With a highly desirable demographic as our (largely captive) audience, and a student population of some 35,000, our sales team had no problem selling enough advertising to cover all costs of production and printing, and so it the paper was given away for free each day, Monday through Friday. On top of that, all staff members were paid for our work — and we still had extra income above and beyond all that left over each semester that went to the campus administration.
At that time, we had a contract with the administration — we were allowed to distribute our papers on campus pretty much wherever we wanted to on the condition that we were covering campus news.
Even though I’d written for both the official and, later, the underground papers in high school, I didn’t try out for the Daily Aztec my first year. Heck, I never did take any journalism courses. Instead, I attempted to follow my grandfather and an uncle in gaining an Air Force commission via ROTC and an engineering major (that later turned into a political science degree when calculus and I came to a mutual misunderstanding).
Sophomore year, we were sitting in the ROTC ready room studying one spring day when someone noticed that the Daily Aztec had the first of a promised three-part series about ROTC on campus — there being both an Army and a Navy detachment in addition to our Air Force unit. (There was also a Marine Corps PLC, or Platoon Leader Class, detachment on campus, but as a I recall they never wore their uniforms to class and so were able to fly under the radar.)
Anyway, day one of this series focused on faculty who were deeply offended and concerned at the presence of trained killers on campus.
We looked forward to the second day, thinking the reporting team would have chatted with our cadre of Air Force officers and enlisted, as well as their Army and Navy counterparts, to explain to readers why having a large influx of working- and middle-class officers in the military was important in a democratic republic.
No such luck. Day 2 was focused on the Soviet-funded Student Peace Education Committee and their feelings of being offended and concerned at the presence of trained killers on campus.
On the third day, we all arrived early on campus to pick up a copy of the Daily Aztec and finally see our side of the story told. It was a bit disconcerting that, again, there were no interviews with actual ROTC students or instructors — instead, off-campus clergy weighed in with their concern that San Diego State was home to three groups of highly trained killers.
We sat at the table looking at each other after reading Part 3, and finally one of the freshman looked up from his copy and blurted out what we were all thinking: “But we’re NOT trained!”
Indeed.
We learned to march and drill, to wear our uniforms correctly, and to ignore the daily insults and occasional face full of spit from the “peace activists” on campus.
But we never got taken to a shooting range — much less drop a bomb or drive a tank! That waited for graduation and being sent to officer induction training.
At lunch that day, as we gathered in the ready room between classes, the cadet colonel — the highest ranking senior class student in our detachment — came in and gathered the underclassmen. We were going to draw straws, he explained, and whomever drew the short straw would go over to the Daily Aztec and apply for a reporter’s job for the fall semester.
The next Tuesday — uniform day, for best effect — I walked into the Aztec office and asked for an application. There was noticeable discomfort at having a trained killer in their office, and one female reporter asked loud enough for me to hear, “Oh my God, does he have a gun?”
The next fall, I found myself on staff — and, the Air Force later declining my offer of service due to eye glasses the thickness of a Coke bottle bottom, I also found my calling in life.
We covered that campus the way it deserved to be covered: Every recital put on by the Music Department, every stage production by the Theater Department, every author or poet who visited, student clubs, new books authored by faculty, the Athletic Department, even intramural sports championships.
If it happened on campus, we covered it.
And if it was off-campus?
That’s what the San Diego Union and the Evening Tribune were for. If you were good enough to land there someday.
The only time we ever competed with them for scoops was when a female student reported being raped at a fraternity house.
I had been the opinion page editor when the incident occurred during fall rush, but by spring semester I was back on the news desk and was assigned to cover the rape story as the investigation was still ongoing.
But our bread and butter was the day to day life of a large public university: Faculty Senate meetings and their interminable proclamations on the Sandinistas and literacy in Cuba. The Associated Students — and why exactly had they bought a yacht on San Diego’s bay front? New department chairs, new deans, majors and minors being added or dropped. Class registration becoming computerized. The ongoing shortage of on-campus housing, and the ever increasing costs of textbooks.
A campus of 35,000 is like a small town — we had our own police force, and there was no shortage of both news and feature stories to fill out each day’s edition.
I write the last few paragraphs in response to a former classmate looking the Daily Aztec up online this weekend and discovering that campus news now is only one part of what they cover. Local, state, national and international stories are now part of the mix.
That’s great that the Daily Aztec is now covering San Diego City Hall, I guess — but who, then, is going to cover the Engineering Club’s robotics competition or the spring dance recital or profile the new catcher for the women’s softball team?
And given that there is no print edition — no in-your-face physical copy to grab your attention, to say, “Hey, read me if you want to know what’s going on with your school,” I’d think a campus focus would be even more important, not less.
Back before I was on staff, before I ever thought about a career in journalism, I still picked up a copy of the Aztec every day to see if anything crazy was going on — and on the says when the news was boring, I’d flip to sports and see how many assists Tony Gwynn had in the previous day’s basketball game (yes, TG went to SDSU on a basketball scholarship, and only played baseball after hoops season was over). Or see how our football, baseball, or women’s volleyball team (which featured Olympic setter Liane Sato) had done.
I realize that today’s students are far more plugged into the online world that was just coming into being 40 years ago, and that reading the news online is as natural for them as picking up the morning paper is for my generation.
But I wonder just how one goes about getting your school paper in front of student eyeballs as effectively as having a stack of them every morning at every entrance to campus.
Making your product a “must read” would seem key — and being a “must read” means covering the stories that affect a community better than anyone else can or will.
Admittedly, what happens on campus might not be as glamorous as a juicy off-campus political issue, but the reality of journalism is that it usually isn’t glamorous.
Particularly when done correctly.
It would be nice if college journalism students learned that lesson before graduation.
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