“Online Elsewhere” with Rich Cameron

I’m honored to be asked to be a contributor to the Journalism Education Collaborative’s blog.

I was part of a rag-tag group years ago that helped found Cal-JEC, which was then known as the California Journalism Education Committee. I have since retired from more than 40 years teaching community college journalism courses and advising student publications.

Since retirement I have continued to contribute to journalism education mostly through my Online Elsewhere research project, which I sort of started as part of my critique efforts as a publications adviser and then developed into a more major project in Spring 2020, not knowing that the pandemic was going to split the semester between in-person and remote teaching.

Online Elsewhere is QUANTITATIVE evaluation of California community college student ONLINE news publications that looks at the numbers of stories written by each publication and a breakdown of story styles and localizations using RSS feeds as a collection source. It also looks at other qualities, such as days and times stories are posted, source use (including numbers and kinds), and in-story linkage, use of multimedia, and coverage of campus governance. The work involves monitoring all of the state’s 55-plus community college online publications on a daily basis throughout much of the year.

The project includes monthly written summaries and observations distributed to community college publications through their faculty advisers, comprehensive semester reports about publications statewide, and, when requested, special speaking presentations to individual publication staffs. I miss the regular interaction with students and wish I’d get more invites than I do.

The most recent semester summary is available in two formats: Download the print version or visit the Online Elsewhere blog.

The goal is to improve community college student journalism across the state and help each publication see how it compares to others through more than a hundred metrics. I still believe in student-run publications, but believe that students can be influenced into making wiser story decisions when armed with statistical knowledge.

The volunteer project is currently in its sixth year.

A major theme of my reports is that the online news publication– I have purposely weaned myself from referring to the sites as newspapers– deserves to be a publication of its own and not just a repository of print stories, even though most stories are still told in newspaper format. As such, I look at a lot of presentation issues in my missives.

I think that many student publications missed a great opportunity to build toward the future when education moved back into the classroom but publications immediately tried to restore the old paradigm that puts the major focus on the print publication over the online publication and social media. There is a bitter taste in my mouth every time I say that, but it seems clear that the online publication and social media/mobile reporting is a big part of our future. The pandemic interruption gave us the perfect opportunity to reinvent and prepare for the future.

I also do a lot of judging these days for press associations around the country, which is more qualitative than quantitative, and some days it is just weird switching between the two approaches.