Resources for students

• The Center for Innovation in College Media
  
• Join our Facebook group

Resources for advisers

• College Media Advisers, Inc.
• CMA's Code of Ethical Behavior
  
• "The Adviser's Desk," monthly article addressing timely issues
• Featured articles written by peers (below) - contact us to suggest or submit a resource article
  

Resources for administrators 

Collegiate Press Freedom

• Student Press Law Center
• College Freedom of the Press (Legislation)

ACCM college news wire

To share recent news coverage from your college or university publication, please attach a Word document (.doc) and email to newswire@christiancollegemedia.org.

ACCM newsletter

Ask an adviser

We'd like to hear your questions, comments and input - whether you're student, faculty, or administrator. Send your queries to advisor@christiancollegemedia.org, and we'll post some of them each month as a resource for our members. (Please indicate whether question and/or names are confidential.) 

Women make strides down journalism career path

by Donna Downs, Taylor University

    Since Katharine Graham officially assumed the title of publisher of the Washington Post in 1979, women in the journalism field have progressed, but not to the degree that gender equality exists in the newsroom.
Susan Reed, 1999 Nieman Fellow, reported in 2002 that since 1997, more women than men have majored in journalism, but women seldom reach the top rung of the journalism ladder.
    In a 2006 study of the Sarasota Herald-Times, a U.S. newspaper led by an all-female management team, researcher Tracy Everbach reported that 18 percent of newspaper publishers were women. Though this was the highest percentage ever reported, gender equity has proven unattainable to date.
    Everbach also reported that women in newspaper management positions at the Herald Times redefined the culture of the paper, making it more family friendly, encouraging and satisfactory for its employees.
    Female media advisers in universities can offer this type of culture to college newspaper staffs. Karen Sorensen, assistant professor at Azusa Pacific University, says, “Seeing a woman work full time and manage a personal life” has encouraged female students on her staff. Though she feels that in the traditional Christian culture, women sometimes run into male students who are not used to being led by women, she believes there is a need for female advisers to lead by example.
    What female advisers can offer to student staffs is the human connection to which Deborah Tannen refers. She says that women often ask questions to establish connections, to soften the sting of potential disagreement and to gain insight to validate another’s expertise.
    Encouraging and enabling a staff of both male and female students can be a key role that women in the newsroom of universities play. Additionally, women advisers can further the acceptance of women in journalism as they lead young men and women toward excellence in the university newsroom.

Let go to let grow

by Dr. Michael Longinow, Biola University, ACCM Executive Director

Infection. Infusion. Input.

Students who lead campus newspapers, television, radio and Web media are smart. We, as advisers do them a disservice when we forget that. They're faster, have more energy, and can go longer without sleep than we can. And they can make the Web work for them in ways we, of the Baby Boom, generally can't touch.

So how do we encourage smarts in our editors, producers and webmasters?

First we prompt. This is hard to do well. Easy to do badly. What you're essentially doing is inspiring them. Call it a cross between a pep talk and a show-and-tell session on what really works in the profession. (And you can't laugh.) Will your campus weekly ever look like the St. Pete Times or the Orange County Register? Not right away. But if you just try to look like the campus daily up the road, then that's all you've got — derivative stuff.

So you raise the bar. Get their chins pointed up, not down.

Then you let them try something. If this is too scary a concept (for either you or your campus administration), let it be something small. If not a total redesign of the newspaper or format of the daily or weekly broadcast, then maybe a piece. But the greater the opportunity for student editors or staff to fail, the more they'll take it seriously.

There's a catch to this, of course.

The bigger the thing you let them tackle, the more likely it is to throw them. Big horse, big fall. LIttle horse, little fall (but no less pain). Some people don't rise above the high bar. They hit their head on it. It's not easy to watch.

Administrators generally have little patience with this failure thing. But there are some who get it — who know that today's embarrassment is tomorrow's one-eighty, the successful direction of efffort toward what journalism ought to be.

At Biola University, students launched a web edition of the weekly newspaper this fall. It was months in the conception and planning. It had a false start. But when it launched  in earnest, it was not just a blotch of color with words and pictures. It was journalism — systematically updated, campus-relevant reporting. These students aren't trained like the Chicago Tribune or the staff of Slate.  But they had smarts, chutzpah, and courage. Good combination.

Don't sell your students short. They often know what to do. You need to let them.