By Cole Kennedy
Major initiatives by legacy media organizations to reinvent themselves for the digital era are a dime a dozen lately. From the lauded “
Snow Fall” feature by the New York Times to the very recent reincarnation of
Newsweek, it seems that publishers are finally catching on to the necessity of a strong online presence, one that doesn’t play second fiddle to the printed edition.
Corporate news organizations aren’t the only ones scrambling to figure out how to survive in a post-print era, though. What about the training grounds of journalism, the venerated student newspapers at high schools and colleges nationwide? They’ve been subjected to growing financial pressure just like any mainstream media organization, perhaps even more so. Fortunately, it seems that their editorial boards are keeping a keen eye on what works and what doesn’t in the industry and applying those lessons to their own, typically independent, publications.
