The Alternative Student Press

“What would students do,” one journalism researcher wondered, “if they got to create a media by them, for them — to create whatever they want, and not have to worry about what’s always been?”

Undergraduate staffers at an increasing number of alternative student publications, largely online-only endeavors that students started from scratch, are “changing the very definition of what it means to be a college journalist and revolutionizing how news at colleges and universities is provided and produced,” Dan Reimold, a journalism Ph.D. candidate at Ohio University, wrote in his recent paper, “‘Tantamount to Starting a Rebellion’: The Shifts in Staff Structure, News Production, and Content Presentation at Online Campus Newspapers and Magazines.”

By offering “a more cultured, real-time take on news that would affect younger people, and from an online-only perspective,” these alternative student publications seem to be “going beyond what the mainstream, professional press was addressing,” Reimold said in an interview.

“It seemed to be an area that the campus media was leading the way on.”

Content Management

It’s hard to make generalizations about the alternative campus media, with some extensive organizations posting new stories daily and other smaller outfits publishing once or twice a semester. The publications vary dramatically, with some, like Michigan State University’s blog-bogged SpartanEdge (motto: “The Future of Online Campus News is Now") embracing aspects of multi- and new media that journalism schools have been slow to adopt. (Hear a Spartan Podcast conducted with the publication’s faculty publisher, Bonnie Bucqueroux).

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