The trials, tribulations of a student media adviser: press freedom

Original layout of The Outlook.

My redesign. Articles are fake, and
photos are by me.

   Sometimes even I think we’re totally nuts for believing we can buck this 21^st Century online newspaper trend.
Many people might think we’re being too optimistic, even unrealistic.

   Despite the naysayers and my fear of failing, we are going forward with our plan to revive a great tradition of providing a campus newspaper that can be physically held, passed around and archived in a scrapbook. 
  We had our first meeting last week to discuss our expectations and plans for the future of The Outlook.

   In attendance were Chris Giordano, dean of Student Life at Owens, our IT guy and co-adviser Mike Jerzykowski, and me. This meeting was important because I had a laundry list of questions for Chris, who will be our administrative boss:

·      What’s the financial state of The Outlook now? Do we have money?

(Yes, we have money. More on that later)

·      What’s the time table for our first printed publication?

(Spring 2014)

·      Can we join the College Media Association and go to conferences?

(Probability is high)

·      Will The Outlook be free of censorship, and be a public forum for student expression?

                                                                          A free press
   I emphasized that this latter question on censorship was the most important because my involvement depended on that answer. There was no way I was going to oversee a student media staff that would be treated like a glorified media relations firm.

   While earning my MA in Journalism Education it was drilled in my head that the freedom of the student press is an inalienable right of people in a free society. It is absolutely paramount that student newspapers everywhere be free to cover news, even if it isn’t always positive.

   Case in point: When the Owens nursing program lost its accreditation in 2009, it was the local media that broke the story and continued to provide updates. The Outlook student staff never touched the subject. I was flabbergasted.

   With that lost opportunity for student journalists in mind, I wanted Chris to know that I am a believer in freedom of the student press, a First Amendment right made strong by the Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, the Supreme Court's landmark 1969 ruling affirming that the First Amendment protected students' right to wear protest anti-military armbands in school.

   This quote made famous by Justice Abe Fortas is still popular today:

“It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

   Chris told me he feels the same, and has already spoken about this issue with the administration.  He assured me that The Outlook would be free of censorship as long as it was ethically and legally fit.

  While press freedom was my primary issue, Chris voiced his own concerns.

  1.  There is no staff policy manual, which is the operational Bible for the organization. It includes the mission statement, policies, Code of Ethics, staff management procedures, publication calendar, writing/editing/layout procedures, type specifications and advertising guidelines. 

   A policy manual keeps the staff organized and the operations of the print/online newspaper standardized, which is essential considering the high student turnover rate in a two-year school.

   2. How will we actually publish the paper? We are starting from scratch, which means designing it, and finding a publisher to print it. We all agreed we won’t be ready to publish our first edition until Spring 2014. We want to do it right, and rushing it could jeopardize a good thing.

   We came out of that initial meeting with high hopes. After the meeting Mike and I walked down the hall to the Outlook office and immediately shared everything we talked about with the two student staff editors, Josh and Cathy, who were relieved to hear they would be included in our bi-monthly meetings from now on.

   In the meantime, Chris will work on the finances; Mike will search for a publication house and update/improve the online presence; and I will create the staff policy manual and train the staff on everything from law and ethics to basic news writing and layout & design.   

   The student staff will assist us in all aspects, and then they will eventually take over. It will be their newspaper, after all.

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)