Campus Papers Can Save Journalism

By Sara Gruen, WireTap. Posted June 24, 2006.

It might never occur to an average news reader to venture over to a local college campus and pick up one of the free indy papers strewn around libraries and student centers. But if they're hungry for vital, original reporting, it wouldn't be a bad idea. As mergers and budget cuts squeeze local papers ever tighter, indy campus reporting has an increasing role in documenting local news.

Taking their cues from alternative weeklies like the Village Voice and the San Francisco Bay Guardian, feisty indy student papers explore the connections between local economies, politics, social trends and campus life. This year's winners of the 2006 Campus Independent Journalism Awards (CIJA) present the mature forefront of these papers and zines.

Both the official and indy papers usually receive funding through the allocations of student governments (though the budgets of independent papers are dwarfed by those of mainstream dailies and weeklies, which traditionally hire and pay their student staff). The real distinctions between independent-spirited campus papers and the official newspaper -- that is, the publication recognized by the campus administration as the official paper or record -- are those of mission, coverage, style and tone.

"It's not a matter of being better than the campus daily, or their being better than us," explains Kay Steiger, editor-in-chief of the University of Minnesota's the Wake, which won for Best Independent Campus Publication of the Year (with a budget over $10,000). "We have a whole week to plan and carry out stories in-depth, so that means we cover a different kind of story and have a different kind of responsibility as reporters and editors. Someone has to cover the meeting of the board of regents; that's important. But we look elsewhere for stories."

Looking elsewhere has meant investigating issues like racial tensions between a growing Somali immigrant population in St. Paul, Minn., and students, or profiling the work and lives of local graffiti artists.

Occasional crossover of reporters from mainstream college dailies to alternative publications where they can find the time and freedom to work on stories they care about is not uncommon. Many journalists see working at the official paper as a prerequisite for entry into journalism school or a position at a mainstream newspaper.

"If you're working at the daily, you're there because you want to go to j-school or you want to get an internship at a paper when you graduate. You don't do it for kicks," noted Michael Hagos, illustrations editor at University of Virginia's Declaration and winner for best artwork/cartoon. "No one's at the Dec because it's a chore they're doing for their resume. Everyone's doing it for the love of great journalism."

Though that may be so, many past winners of the CIJ Awards have found careers in the independent press at publications like Salon.com, The Nation and Mother Jones.

Substance with style

The drive to report creatively carries over into the design and layout choices at indy publications. Brown's College Hill Independent, winner for best design/layout, uses a mixture of grids and open fields that conveys a sense of freedom and play. "The daily has a more formal, text-heavy appearance that's consistent with what they do. We have purposefully built in space for experimentation," explains editor Ben Mercer. "The designers make choices for each issue, and the editors live with it."

Yale's beautifully designed Environmental Leadership Magazine [PDF], winner for Best Independent Publication of the Year (with a budget under $10,000), aims to do nothing less than use design to reinvent environmentalism. "The idea with ELM was to use design to carry a message about environmentalism: that they can be one and the same."

At its best, the freedom to innovate with style, tone and topic makes for storytelling that's unapologetically impressionistic, yet deeply researched and rigorously fact-checked. Megan Murry, a staff writer for Ithaca College's Buzzsaw Haircut, produced a remarkably nuanced look at her small town's Republican mayor for her winning article [PDF]in the GLBT coverage category.

Sara Gruen is the coordinator of the Independent Press Association's Campus Journalism Project.

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