Spring 2023 Report
Spring 2023 Report
By Rich Cameron
California community college student publications are inching back to production levels of Spring 2020, the semester the pandemic hit, but are still well short of the following spring when all schools were forced into remote instruction.
Spring 2020 numbers are not exactly "pre pandemic," but provide a baseline for production numbers today. The semester was the first semester I gathered numbers under the current format, but it was interrupted mid-way by the pandemic. That semester student publications posted 5,636 stories, though numbers appeared to increase about 14 percent in the second half of the semester.
The following spring, when everyone was operating from home, the same publications posted 1,200 stories more (6,825) than the ill-fated semester, though many were first-person stories.
Spring 2023 marked the fourth spring semester of this Online Elsewhere research series and the sixth overall. This spring, as all schools returned to some semblance of normal operations, student publications continued a climb in story numbers and ended with 4,416.
- Of 44 publications measured both the pandemic semester (Spring 2020) and this semester, 29 had fewer stories this spring.
- Of 46 measured both the remote semester (Spring 2021) and this semester, 36 had fewer stories this spring.
- Of 50 publications measured both last spring and this spring, only 27 had fewer stories this semester.
- For seven publications this was the lowest output semester of five semesters included in the study.
Every story posted by the 50 active publications this semester was catalogued and categorized as news, opinion, sports, or feature with a campus focus, community focus, or neither (a.k.a general).
This report has two main parts. Part One summarizes the spring semester results and Part Two summarizes how each publication fared; this part includes a report of the publication’s numbers and how these numbers fare with other publications, and a report of the publication’s posting patterns.
- - -
The return to campus has had the effect of more campus-based stories. A total of 71.6 percent of all stories this semester was campus-based, compared to 57.6 percent in Spring 2020. The percentage of campus-based stories has continued to inch higher most semesters since then.
The percentage of news stories has dropped slightly over the years, but some of that may be a refinement of definitions as the project progressed. Most semesters news accounts for 42-47 percent of all entries.
After the first two semesters of the study focused on spring semesters only, fall semesters were added to the study. Spring semesters are measured from Jan. 1 to June 15 (24 weeks) and fall semesters are measured from Aug. 1 through Dec. 31. This allows for coverage of different start and end dates for schools across the state.
Fall semester reports were added as an extension of the multi-year series at the request of several community college instructors. While no report was made for Fall 2021, data was collected retroactively from that semester so that there would be something similar with which to compare Fall 2022 figures; there are significant differences between fall and spring semesters that make fall-to-spring comparisons less helpful.
Semester reports from previous semesters can be found at:
- Spring 2020 - bit.ly/3ZpEgAD
- Spring 2021 - (no report available)
- Fall 2021 - (no report available)
- Spring 2022 - bit.ly/3W3utgP
- Fall 2022 - bit.ly/fall22x
- Spring 2023 - bit.ly/44SgJdx
There are 116 community colleges in California, but only about 50, plus or minus, have student publications in a given semester. This spring one new publication was added to the study: College of the Canyons. Another was left out as College of the Sequoias publication was discontinued by college administration because of low enrollments. About 60 publications that have shown activity online over the last 10 years are monitored through RSS feeds, though only 50 were active this spring.
Two known-to-still-be-active publications --Los Angeles City College and Southwestern College-- used to have online publications, but they currently don't. Butte College has an online publication but is not included in the study because its format makes it difficult to measure against other publications.
See Appendix A for a list of school publications. The same chart indicates which schools offer the new Associate of Arts for Transfer (AA-T) in Journalism and which have courses approved as part of the California Identification (C-ID) program. C-ID is a community-college led initiative designed to identify equivalent courses across the state at both the community college and California State University programs that are part of the AA-T.
It should be noted that C-ID approvals have stalled the last few years due to a lack of CSU participation, so that list may not be complete; about 96 courses remain unreviewed. The California Community College Chancellor's Office, which approves AA-Ts has apparently allowed schools to offer courses required for the AA-T without C-ID approval on a long-term temporary basis. The C-ID approval process is operated by the California Community College Academic Senate rather than the Chancellor's Office. The list of AA-Ts came from the Chancellor's Office and is more likely to be up to date.
TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
Stories were categorized by type —news, opinion, sports, or feature—and by localization —campus, community, or neither. In addition, dates and times of posts were noted. Where appropriate, posts were also tagged for subject matter. Monthly reports were shared with publication advisers through the JACC mail listserv.
Posts
Any post was considered for inclusion unless it was an obvious duplicate post, was an obvious test post, or in the case of one college a verified fraud. No other distinction was made. A post might include a story, photographs, and multimedia; or it may include just a brief or a photo. One school even posted individual images/PDFs of print edition pages for portfolio reasons. (Four posts on one of the non-active online sites that were clearly hacks were also excluded after checking with the faculty adviser for authenticity.) If a post was later updated, it was treated as a duplicate post.
Dates
When posts are made, RSS feeds usually date-stamp the posts, even if it occasionally takes a couple of days for it to appear in feeds. If posts were later updated some systems add a second date or time stamp; again, these were treated as duplicates. Some schools routinely posted stories that clearly had been created, or at least started, weeks earlier and retained the creation date on posts; but since posts were monitored daily they were recorded as actually being posted on the dates they showed up in the RSS feed.
Posts were recorded for the date they showed up in RSS feeds. If a post had an earlier post date in its date stamp it was noted as a “late post.”
Times
Along with date stamps are time stamps. Times were recorded and categorized in one of four six-hour blocks of time:
- Wee hours (midnight to 5:59 a.m.),
- Morning (6:00 a.m. to 11:59 a.m.),
- Afternoon (noon to 5:59 p.m.), and
- Evening (6:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.)
Two publications that do not support standard RSS did not include time stamps. While dates for posts could be determined, time-of-day could not. These posts were not included in reporting posting times but were included in other counts.
Story type
All stories were categorized as one of four types: News, Opinion, Sports, or Feature.
Sports was the first bias in determining story type, next was News, then Opinion v. Feature. All sports stories were categorized as Sports, regardless of story format.
Many reporters consider only profiles as features, but not for this study. For instance, a story about a club activity would be considered a news story, but if the story primarily focused on the purpose of the club it was considered a news feature.
The most subjective decisions were with reviews: Was the overall tone more opinion or merely feature? Lists of favorite movies/music/foods/holiday traditions, while obviously opinions, were counted as features; and as the only sources for those features were the authors, they were counted as “neither” localization.
Localization
And finally, stories were categorized by one of three localizations: Campus based, community based, or neither/general. Campus based was the first bias. If the story happened on campus or at another district campus, it was campus based. Even national stories that contained local sources or details were determined to be campus based. Merely mentioning the school, most often in leads, was not enough to be categorized as campus based. Some statewide stories that clearly affected a local campus, for instance California Community College Chancellor news conferences for student reporters, were also considered campus based.
Community-based was the second bias. Often this was subjective. Communities in immediate proximity of campus were included, but at times a story in a regional metropolis a few miles down the road might be considered community based, depending on relevance to the campus community; other times they were categorized as neither. The question was in determining how far "community" extended.
"Neither" or “general” was the catch-all for remaining stories. Reviews most commonly were considered as "neither."
Stories about professional sports also were categorized as “neither,” even if the team was located in the college’s service area, unless it was a community issue story, such as the Oakland A’s considering a move to Las Vegas, or involved the college, such as a college night at the Anaheim Angels. “Community” sports tended to be stories about local high school sports.
Tags
Tags were added to some stories to better highlight story content. They were not included on all stories or topics.
There were no pre-determined tags, though some became obvious, such as identifying different sports or which media were reviewed or to identify topical trends. Other tags were created to help identify important story content for well-rounded publications; for example, "campus governance" for stories about various senates, boards, foundations, unions, and administrations (except for when administrators were used simply as sources).
Adjusted weeks
While most colleges started their spring semesters in the last week of January/first week of February for the spring semester, not all do, and different programs start actual publication at different times. Some publications posted stories before the school year started while others took several weeks to get started. Likewise, some publications continue after finals have been completed while others wrap up in late May. And some schools continue to publish during holiday breaks, others do not. There are a total of 22 possible publishing weeks between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31 (fall semester) and 24 weeks between Jan. 1 and June 15 (spring semester).
To create a standard method for determining weekly averages an “adjusted week” metric was used. The first week for any publication was measured as the first in which two or more posts were made between Sunday and Saturday. Likewise, the last week of the semester for a publication was the one which contained two or more posts. No adjustments were made for holiday periods. If a publication had additional one-off posts outside its adjusted week window the posts were counted toward the total, but the weeks were not adjusted further.
Campus Governance
One of the roles of any publication is to serve as a watchdog for its community, so note was taken of campus governance stories, such as those that cover student, faculty, and classified senates and unions, board of trustees, college foundations, and some administrative actions.
Covid
The Covid coronavirus pandemic obviously had an impact on coverage and the types of stories covered in the last few years. For the purposes of this study, Covid-related stories were limited to those that talked about mask and vaccination requirements, campus infections, vaccination clinics, etc. Merely mentioning that Covid contributed to the cause of something, such as cancellation or creation of a campus event, was not enough to tag it as a Covid story.
Posting Patterns
Separate posting calendars were kept for each publication to show how many posts were made on which days. The reports that followed highlighted excessive gaps –arbitrarily defined as six or more days—and excessive post days –arbitrarily defined as six or more posts on a single day.
A posting percentage was calculated for each publication by multiplying the number of adjusted weeks by seven days and then dividing the actual number of posting days by the result.
posting days /adjusted weeks x 7 days = posting percentage
Traffic
Traffic, as measured by the free version of SimilarWeb.com, included visitors to the website during the measured monthly window. This did not measure unique visitors. While some data on number of pages visited or time spent on websites was available, those numbers were not included in this study. Results were reported in thousands rather than individual numbers. Results were available for most publications, but not all.
Disclaimer
No determination on quality of stories or publications was made, as this was not a goal of the study. Raw numbers included in this report are included for illustrative purposes. Publications should look at the numbers and determine whether they meet staff-determined goals.
Most numbers are expressed in terms of percentage of the whole, though raw numbers are included to indicate how percentages were determined. When raw numbers or ranked are highlighted in this study they are not meant to imply "better" or "worse," but are used solely for comparison’s sake.
It should be noted, too, that when percentage-of-the-whole numbers are used a high rank in one category, by definition, it means a corresponding lower rank in another similar category: again, staffs need to establish their own goals.
Publications posted 4,416 stories over the 5.5 months for an average of 82.7 stories per publication. The median, however, was 77 stories.
The actual numbers ranged from El Camino’s high of 257 stories to a low of Cabrillo’s seven. It is not a competition, of course, for the most or the least stories, but the numbers do show a disparity across the state. In the top 15 of publications on the chart to the left all but three are southern California schools.
There is a myriad of causes for this disparity. The most obvious are staff size and staff experience. But perhaps the biggest reason is treating the online publication with a print mindset; if the word “issues” comes up in your staff’s discussions, it probably means that story deadlines are being set for print rather than online in mind. Online each day is an “issue.”
Quantity of stories does not automatically result in quality of stories, but quantity provides opportunity for growth.
Across the state, when adjusted for actual publication (see adjusted weeks definition), publications posted an average of 4.8 stories per week (median = 5.5). Five publications averaged 10 or more per week, with Pasadena’s 16.4 leading the pack.
If a staff consists of just 10 persons and each staff member published an average of one story per week for the online edition, the average staff would more than double its 4.8 stories per week and end up with at least 160 stories (10 stories x the average adjusted weeks of 16).
At least one post was made across the state each day from Jan. 1 to June 15 except for five days in January (1, 7, 8, 10, and 21). The busiest day of the semester was Wednesday, May 10, with 94 posts from 29 publications.
Campus focus
Spring 2023 stories focused on campus sources were at their highest since Online Elsewhere has been reporting semester figures. It settled at 71.6 percent. For most of the semesters it has settled closer to 65.0 percent and as low as 50.5 percent.
The increase, no doubt, is attributed to a return to campus and the availability of campus stories and sources.
Campus stories, again, were any story with a direct campus tie-in or source other than a mere mention of the campus. A story focused on a sister campus in a multi-campus district was also considered campus related, as were many of the State Chancellor’s Office news conference stories.
Sports stories involving campus teams were considered campus based, whether they were played at home or on the road. All roving reporter style stories were campus based, regardless of subject matter, if they involved campus sources. When determining localization, campus was the first bias.
Community focus
Of course, not all stories were campus based. More and more publications are expanding coverage to off campus in their community with hopes of building a larger base of readers. In metropolitan areas it is increasingly popular to cover the many protests; in southern California they seem to happen weekly.
Across the state community coverage is still low with just a 7.8 percent average. College of the Canyons, which was added to the study just this semester, saw nearly two-thirds (61.5 percent) of its stories focus on the surrounding community. And Canyons did it with video stories accompanying text stories most of the time.
Most community stories are based on events, but there is a large body of feature stories about local issues of interest. Some publications, such as Mt. San Antonio, regularly cover local city council and school board meetings. When there are wildfires in the area, an all-too-common situation, Santa Rosa excels in community fire features and news.
“Neither” or “General” focus
And then there are the publications that focus a lot on topics without a campus or community focus. This is not to say that these stories lack reader interest, only that they have not addressed the campus or community directly with examples or sources. “Neither” based stories account for one in five of all stories.
Most common are music, movie, book, computer game, and television reviews of high interest to campus readers. All professional sports stories without a specific campus or community tie-in also fall into this category of stories. Also represented in this area were a lot of ChatGPT/AI stories and LGBTQ+ issues (as opposed to events, such a lavender graduations).
Just six schools have NO “neither/general” stories. Mt. San Jacinto led the state with nearly two-thirds of its stories unrelated to campus or community.
One of the issues, of course, is that with “neither” focus, and to a lesser extent with community-focused stories, is that students summarize information from other sources rather than actually talk to sources and develop their interviewing skills.
Story types
News continues to be the most used format for stories. News posts accounts for just under half of all stories. This has been consistent throughout the years of this study; 44.2 percent of stories were categorized as news. Totals have ranged between 41.6 percent and 47.2 percent all semesters except Spring 2021 —the remote instruction semester—when first person opinion stories made a slight uptick.
This spring news stories ranged from Moreno Valley’s 80 percent high to Sierra’s 11.1 percent low.
This word cloud shows the words most likely to show up in news headlines across the state. Words like student, students, college, campus, history, and Black are frequently used, but so are college initials, such as PCC (Pasadena), LBCC (Long Beach), OCC (Orange Coast), BC (Bakersfield), Mt. (Mt. San Antonio and Mt. San Jacinto), and LMC (Los Medanos); it might be noted that most of these schools also rate high in the number of stories posted. Word clouds can show us which subjects are written about most, but they can also show which words may be overused in headlines.
The next most common story type was the feature story, which accounted for nearly a quarter of all stories. As noted elsewhere, feature stories included more than profile features. For instance, they can include a story about regular features offered in a Student Services Office. Features might also include “reviews” sadly lacking in any opinion or hidden opinion.
Now that campus sports are back in full swing, and a new sport of women’s wrestling has arrived, sports ranked next. Campus sports stories ruled, with nearly 85 percent of all sports stories relating to campus sports, compared to just 14 percent relating to professional and semi-professional sports. Of nearly 850 sports stories overall, only 10 related to community sports, which for this study included mostly local high school sports.
Unsurprisingly, men’s baseball dominated spring campus sports coverage with 432 stories, just under double the number for women’s softball. Men’s basketball just edged out women’s basketball for the third slot.
Some of the difficulty involved low-coverage sports only showing up in briefs roundups. Brief roundups do not really make sense for an online publication, though it is common in print and the practice carries over; if one is looking to see how the college’s golf team is doing, for instance, it is burdensome to pore through briefs coverage in hopes of finding a mention: length of story is less meaningful online than it is in print.
This spring’s sports coverage covered a wider array of sports than in previous semesters and included such obscure California community college sports as badminton, lacrosse, crew, and ice hockey. New to community college sports this year was women’s wrestling, which garnered 22 stories. Even traditional fall sports, such as football and soccer, saw coverage.
In sports where gender separation was possible men’s sports received about 60 percent of the coverage, but, anecdotally, if it had been possible to accurately separate combined sports the balance would have been closer to 50-50.
Some publications focused heavily on campus sports coverage, while five had no sports at all: campus, community, or professional. Orange Coast had the most campus sports stories (n. 62), which represented more than a third of all its stories. Two publications —Riverside and San Francisco—had more campus sports stories than it had campus news stories. Riverside had the highest percentage of campus sports, with 40.5 percent of all its stories being campus sports.
Opinion stories
Two complementary roles of a student publication are that of marketplace of ideas and opinion leader. While the marketplace of ideas can be fulfilled in news and feature stories by including the opinions of sources, the role of opinion leader takes place almost exclusively through the publication’s opinion stories. Sadly, eight publications had no opinion stories this spring; another 10 had no opinion stories relating to campus issues.
Just 12.1 percent of all stories were opinion stories, and most of them are movie, music, television, book, and other reviews unrelated to the campus or community. There are approximately two “neither” opinion stories for every campus- or community-related opinion story.
Los Medanos College led the state in opinion stories of all kinds with nearly 27 percent of its stories being opinion stories, but the statewide average was 10.6 percent.
Pierce was the leader in the state with 14 campus opinion stories. The statewide average was just two.
Campus play and music performance reviews represent the leading topics for campus opinion stories, but other key topics include transportation and parking issues, economy issues, food choices, infrastructure, housing needs, and campus shooting preparedness.
The most popular non-campus/non-community topics for opinion stories were movie reviews (n. 94), television reviews (n. 29), music reviews (n. 24), video game reviews (n. 18), book reviews (n. 15), and food/restaurant reviews (n. 8). There were more stories about these topics, but they lacked sufficient opinion and were classified as features.
Other non-campus/non-community topics of interest were the environment (n. 17), economic issues (n. 13), ChatGPT/AI (n. 9), and LGBTQ+ issues (n. 7). Again, there more stories about these topics, but they were news or feature stories.
Campus governance
Eight schools had no campus governance stories for spring and nearly half had fewer than two, the state average.
Campus governance includes covering administrative functions (more than simply quoting campus leaders in other stories), boards of trustees, student senates, faculty and classified senates, unions, and shared governance committees (such as Curriculum committees). Stories can be news, feature, or opinion stories. Regular coverage is the key.
Santa Barbara was the leader in the state in covering campus governance with 20 stories, but another 14 publications had 10 or more stories for the semester.
Multimedia
This semester 29 publications, or nearly 60 percent, had at least one multimedia story and only 10 had 10 or more. There was a total of 300 multimedia stories, just over half of one percent of all stories.
The most common form was video stories with 166, or more than half. There were 66 photo galleries and 63 audio stories.
Leading the way with multimedia was College of the Canyons, which ran video components with nearly all of its stories. As such, it also led the way for good practice of including the multimedia piece along with a story, giving the reader some clue as to what might be found in the video or audio component; too many publications simply attached an audio or video story to a post with nothing more than a headline to inform the reader of content. Good practice includes, at minimum, an explanatory paragraph and/or a timeline of topic covered; better still is a story or transcript, something increasingly easier to create with today’s software.
It should be noted, too, that there were many more than 65 stories that used multiple photos, but they displayed them in a traditional print format rather than packaging them into photo galleries
There were just five stories using interactive graphics.
Posting dates, times, and patterns
Wednesday continued to be the most popular day to post stories as publications post twice as many stories that day as most other days of the week. Postings on the rest of the days, counting Saturday and Sunday as one, was fairly evenly distributed.
And publications, which typically are created in afternoon courses, overwhelmingly posted more stories between noon and 6 p.m. than at other times. Evenings —between 6 p.m. and midnight—are also busy times. The least likely time slot for posts was between midnight and 6 a.m., but three schools in particular —El Camino (n. 59), Mt. San Antonio (n. 48), and Cerritos (n. 28)—were not shy about posting when most others were sleeping. Twenty-nine schools had at least one post in the wee hours.
More instructive, however, was how often publications post stories than what day or what time of day.
Adjusted weeks are measured from the first week in the semester –measured from Sunday to Saturday— that a publication had two or more posts to the last week of the semester that a publication had two or more posts. (Posts outside that range were counted in overall totals.) No other adjustments for holidays or spring breaks were made because some publications continued posting during their schools’ breaks.
To calculate potential posting days, the adjusted weeks number was multiplied by seven days. Then the actual number of posting days was divided by the potential number.
The statewide average for the resulting metric was 33.4 percent of the days, or between two and three days per week.
Seven publications had posting percentages of 50 percent or more.
Also observed as part of the posting days monitoring were excessive gaps —defined as six or more days between posts— and excessive-post days, days in which six or more posts were made. There were 159 excessive gaps between Jan. 1 and June 15, with the longest lasting more than a month. And there were 119 excessive-post days, with one publication seeing 12 of its 17 actual post days being excessive-post days. The significance of the excessive gap and excessive post days is important if the publication is trying to build an online audience. For strong audience loyalty there must be fresh content frequently.
Another metric monitored this spring was that of late posts. Posts are noted on the day they appear in the RSS feed, but their stamped creation dates were five or more days earlier. In one case, for example, a publication had no posts for more than a month. When stories showed up their date stamps were clustered around what appeared to be two print-issue dates, suggesting that the online site is viewed by that publication as merely as an archive rather than a dynamic publication.
There were 117 such late posts this spring; 24 publications had at least one late post. While this phenomenon has been observed in previous semesters it was not tracked. Anecdotally, it was far more common this spring than in previous semesters.
Traffic
The old question asks, “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, did it make a sound?” The student publication version of that is, “If you create a student publication and no one sees it has journalism taken place.” Of course, there are pedagogical advantages to publishing online without an outside audience, but it helps if there IS an audience.
Thanks to website measuring tools, such as Google Analytics, it is possible to divine all kinds of insights from web traffic, but many publications do not review the data for their sites regularly. To help measure the effectiveness of sites without access to the site’s full analytic data, the website similarWeb.com was used to gather basic traffic information for community college sites.
California’s community college publications saw more than 4.8 million views over the semester. The average publication saw an average of 18.6k views each month. The high (Santa Rosa) was 52.7k per month and the low was 2.1k per month.
SimilarWeb’s free version is problematic, but it does provide three months’ worth of traffic data for those sites than can be measured. Glendale was not measurable, and Palomar’s site is buried in the college’s URL domain, so it was not measurable.
Publications are encouraged to review their own analytics and determine what measures help them achieve their own goals.
Topics
Most campus-based stories covered campus events and club news, but it was interesting to see each semester what types of topics, especially those popular in the country’s culture, students wrote about. The word cloud above maps the most common topics. This list is different than what was discussed above with story types and headline words. These are categories created as part of the research and includes all non-sports stories, whether campus-, community- or neither-based. Comm topics included:
Movies (n. 187) – This, of course, includes movie reviews, but also movie features and film program news, as well as speakers and presentations on campus. A notable non-review from Pasadena included “Moviegoers refuse to pay admission and attention.”
Food (n. 186) – In addition to restaurant reviews and features, this includes stories about food and drink options, including recipes. A series that stood out was Citrus’ revival of its chicken wars tournament.
Music (n. 186) – Again, music reviews of top albums made up the bulk of these stories, but they also included campus music program recitals and Spotify playlists.
About a third of the music stories were of campus music or localized music stories.
Crime (n. 164) – Many of these stories were campus crime reports, whether part of a police blotter style story or simply any action that required law enforcement involvement, including the continuing fraud story of bots creating phantom enrollments. Standouts included Laney’s watchdog efforts of the college’s board of trustees, El Camino’s continuing follow-up of a trial involving the murder of a student, and DeAnza’s “Ghost students create rigged system for community colleges.”
Economy (n. 161) – These stories affected readers’ wallets and can range from tuition rates to swap meets and thrift shop features. One notable feature was East LA’s “First generation Latino students struggle financially.” Not included were general stories about scholarships.
Mental health/suicide (n. 124) – These stories largely focused on mental health services available on campus or tips for maintaining mental health. Also included were stories about suicide and burnout prevention. A standout was Orange Coast’s “OCC students seeking sociability.”
Art (n. 124) – Art stories included features about local artists, but also included art gallery news and photography news and features. It does not indicate photo or other art usage in the publication.
Stage (n. 107) – Many of these stories featured news and reviews of campus plays. Also included were poetry readings. Not included were music performances and dance recitals.
Environment (n. 86) – These included various news, feature, and opinion stories about global warming and various sustainability issues. While some climate stories were included, most stories about heavy rains were not; the effect of those rainstorms was. An interesting non-campus feature was Pasadena’s “White-nose syndrome targets bats, but humans shouldn’t turn a blind eye.”
LGBTQ+ (n. 80) – LGBTA+ stories and features blossomed this semester from previous semesters, especially due to the opening of campus pride centers and lavender graduations. Innovative stories included Diablo Valley’s “Trans Athletes at DVC Await New Policy Rules from College Athletic Association.” (Okay, a sports-related story made it onto this list!)
Women (n. 67) – Women’s history month generated a lot of women’s issue stories on campus.
Television (n. 60) – These stories were almost exclusively reviews, features and news about television shows. The explosion of television streaming services received more attention than programs on traditional broadcast and cable networks. Many writer’s strike stories were categorized here, though they could just as easily been connected with movies. An innovative feature included San Joaquin Delta’s “Box office death by streaming?”
Books (n. 59) – These stories ranged from book reviews, to on-campus speakers, to special library displays, to book banning stories, such as San Diego Mesa’s “Why book banning endangers intellectuality and dooms our future.”
ChatGPT/AI (n. 43) – This continued to be one of the hot topics in the United States and was the subject of workshops on campuses across the state. An interesting story of how ChatGPT was localized was Long Beach’s “ChatGPT just ordered its cap and gown,” where English faculty graded four AI-generated essays and gave passing grades to three of them.
Tech (n. 40) – These stories included concern about campus wifi and email, the impact of online courses, and the introduction of campus-specific apps, such as with Santa Barbara’s “New app will allow students to better navigate transfer process.” Not included were stories that focused on social media.
The linked pages include four-page packages for each school. In addition to a narrative summary, the packages include publication numbers in various categories, posting patterns, and rankings.
American River - Bakersfield - Cabrillo - Canyons - Cerritos - Chabot - Chaffey - Citrus - Contra Costa - Cosumnes River - Cuesta - Cypress - DeAnza - Desert - Diablo Valley - East LA - El Camino - Foothill - Fresno - Fullerton - Glendale - Grossmont - LA Valley - Laney - Las Positas - Long Beach - Los Medanos - Moorpark - Moreno Valley - Mt. San Antonio - Mt. San Jacinto - Orange Coast - Palomar - Pasadena - Pierce - Rio Hondo - Riverside - Sacramento - Saddleback - San Diego City - San Diego Mesa - San Francisco - San Joaquin Delta - San Jose - Santa Ana - Santa Barbara - Santa Monica - Santa Rosa - Sequoias - Sierra - Skyline - Southwestern
Comments
Post a Comment