The trials, tribulations of a student media adviser: the beginning

The front page of the May 5, 2003 issue.

Sometimes you get what you wish for…you just have to be patient. And I was very patient.
   It’s time to announce that this Fall I will be the new adviser for Owens Community College’s newspaper The Outlook.
   It will be a huge challenge, considering I’m an inexperienced adviser and there is no newspaper, at least not the old fashioned hold-in–your-hands kind. There is an online version that’s staffed by two dedicated students but there's a big problem ... this version seems to be ‘out of sight and out of mind.’
   That needs to change.

   The beginning

   I first noticed The Outlook when I started teaching photography courses at Owens in 2006. Over the years I’ve been paying attention to the over-sized broadsheet, which was filled with mostly canned stories that had nothing to do with the Owens community.
    At the risk of sounding critical, the paper was physically too big, the stories were too generic, the photography was weak, and the layout was stale. A skeleton staff of mostly non-journalism majors can only do so much.
    The Outlook first made its debut on May 5, 2003. It started out 10,000 copies strong, according to a news release touting the new student-run paper.
   “More than 20 students from a variety of program areas collaborated to produce the first edition,” wrote Brad Meyer, director of Public and Media Relations at the time. “An additional 50 students have expressed interest in working on the future issues of the newspaper.”
   But over the years that interest has obviously waned. It doesn’t help that the one and only journalism course was dropped last year. So how do you maintain a quality campus newspaper when there are too few journalism students to support it?
   Anyway, in 2010, I had the opportunity to unofficially redesign the newspaper. I was a graduate student in Kent State’s online Journalism Education program, and one of my classes was Teaching News Design, taught by Jon Wile, the Washington Post’s A1 news designer. The final project for the course required redesigning a newspaper using InDesign CS5. I chose The Outlook as my homework assignment.
   However, shortly after that redesign the hard copy version of the paper ceased and it went completely online, as is the growing trend these days.
   Though my attempt at redesign didn’t pay off, there was another way I could help. Because I teach the Intro to Photojournalism course, I got my students engaged with The Outlook. This is how Cathy Zeltner got involved. Cathy took the Intro to PJ class last year out of curiosity. That curiosity has since turned into a possible career option. She quickly went from being a staff photographer to the photography editor, and is now the current managing editor. Lynn Redding, another former Intro to PJ student, is the current photo editor. The current editor-in-chief, Josh Widanka, is taking the course this Fall.
   Between the four of us, plus Mike, our IT guy and co-adviser, we are committed to bringing the newspaper back to print.
   So, this is the beginning of an unpaved road never traveled. For the next year I will document the trials and tribulations of being a brand new adviser. I will share how a small staff at a small college reverses an online newspaper trend.
   I have been patient long enough.

   (Next blog post: Our emerging plan to return to tradition)