Fall 2024 Online Elsewhere Report
Fall 2024
By Rich Cameron
Built on the backbone of election coverage, 53 California community college publications saw a healthy 8.3 percent increase of story posts for Fall 2024 over the same period last year. The 53 publications posted 4,175 stories from Aug. 1 through Dec. 31.
The semester got off to a slow start, but picked up by late October as election stories led the way. (Election stories accounted for nearly 10 percent of all stories for the semester.) It appears that 15 publications (28.3 percent) saw downturns of 10 percent or more for the semester, but 27 of the remaining publications saw healthy increase to raise the state total.
One print publication still does not have a publication website. Another without a website last fall (Southwestern) got one, but barely used it. East LA started the semester with a site sideline by malware, but got back on track by October. Two publications that posted last spring --Monterey Peninsula and Moreno Valley-- were dormant this semester. And Rio Hondo, which normally posts in the mid-to-higher range, was dormant except for a spate of eight election video stories.
This was the ninth semester for Online Elsewhere reports that began as a one-semester project in Spring 2020, which happened to be the semester the pandemic interrupted mid-way. Previous reports 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
• Fall 2023 - bit.ly/3U5v2t1 (web) or bit.ly/4ePR0It (pdf)
• Spring 2024 - https://bit.ly/3VYo9Kc
The table of contents for this report consists of:
Intro
Terms and definitions
Semester summary
Election coverage
Multimedia
Word counts
Publication-by-publication reports (included in full report)
List of publications (with links) (included in full report)
Potential New Year/semester resolutions
The full report is available as a PDF download at https://bit.ly/3ChM68H. It also contains publication-by publication summaries, including full numbers, rankings, and posting patterns for each publication. The report also includes a list of California community college publications with links to those publications.
Terms and Definitions
As with any research project of this size it is important to define terms used to make categorizations. Only minor tweaks from previous semesters were made in these definitions. Stories were categorized by genre/type —news, opinion, sports, or feature—and by localization —campus, community, or general/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. If a post was later updated, it was treated as a duplicate post. If it was later deleted, which occurred more frequently this spring, no adjustment was made, as deletions could be made any time, even months later.
Dates
When posts are made originally, 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. Posting dates and times are available with most, but not all RSS feeds.
Late Posts
In most WordPress platforms a story contains a dateline that indicates when it was created, regardless of when it was posted. (Likewise, when stories are updated there often is an updated date added to the meta data.) Most stories are posted within a day of creation. But others don’t show up for days (or weeks), indicating that the publication held on to the story for some time. Posts were recorded for the day they showed up in RSS feeds, but it those dates were three or more days after the creation date they were tagged as “late” posts. An occasional late post is normal, but some publications make a practice of it. For perspective, there were 35 “late” posts for Spring 2024, less than 1 percent.
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 (Chaffey and Orange Coast) do not support standard RSS and 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/Genre
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 an already existing 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 unless they had another direct tie-in to campus or community.
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. Non-campus reviews most commonly were considered as "neither."
Stories about professional, semi-professional and NCAA-level sports also were categorized as “neither,” even if the team was located in the college’s service area, unless it was primarily 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
Subject 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/Averages
While most colleges started their fall semesters in late August or early September, 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. Most publications wrapped up the semester in the first half of December, but some went until late December. 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 Monday and Sunday. Likewise, the last week of the semester for a publication was the one that 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. They might be news, feature, or opinion (and, in rare cases, sports) stories.
Multimedia
Four types of multimedia stories were tracked:
1. Stories with or consisting of audio,
2. Stories with or consisting of video,
3. Stories with or consisting of photo galleries in a widget, and
4. Stories with or consisting of interactive tools.
Also included were a shrinking number of animated issuu.com or yumpa.com postings. Once common platforms for storing PDF documents, such as copies of print issues, many student publications have moved away after new pricing policies made them difficult to afford. Also tracked were stories with three or more photos that could have, or perhaps should have, been presented in gallery form.
For some publications, using a gallery with three or more photos might mean a smarter presentation, but not always. Also noted where multimedia “stories” of all sorts where ONLY the multimedia portion was included or only a short paragraph was added: gallery only, audio segment only, video only, audio introduced with a single paragraph, video with only a single paragraph, gallery with a single paragraph, etc. The strangest, perhaps, were the collections of three or more photos without any explanation beyond a headline.
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 —defined as six or more days— and excessive post days —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
Here is how daily averages work out:
• One day = 14.3 percent
• Two days = 28.6 percent
• Three days = 42.9 percent
• Four days = 57.1 percent
• Five days = 71.4 percent
• Six days = 85.7 percent
• Seven days = 100 percent
Word Count
All posts were subjected to a word count using the Word Count function in Microsoft Word. Excluded were headlines, infographics, photos and cutlines. Subheads, however, were included. Some posts had no text after subtracting excluded elements. And some stories were deleted after being posted, but before being counted.
Traffic
Traffic, as measured by the free version of SimilarWeb.com, included visitors to the website during the measured monthly window. 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, which is how the website reports them. 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.
Posts are harvested from RSS feeds only, unless a site does not support standard RSS. Harvesting from the website itself is more time consuming and it is too easy to miss a new post. Posts that are added to static pages do not show up in RSS feeds.
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SEMESTER SUMMARY
While fall semester posts trail spring semester posts, they have shown a continual increase each school year. (The spring semester measured is two weeks longer than the fall semester measured.) This fall it increased 7.7 percent over last fall.
Fall 2021 to Fall 2022 = 33.9 percent increase
Fall 2022 to Fall 2023 = 5.8 percent increase
Fall 2023 to Fall 2024 = 8.3 percent increase
Still, a lot of publications appeared to struggle this semester. Nearly a quarter (n.15, 24.5 percent) saw a 10 percent or larger decline in the number of stories posted. Just over half (n.27, 50.9 percent) saw increases of 10 percent or more. Two publications with posts last spring were completely dormant this fall and no new publications appeared on the scene, though one previously without an active website activated one this fall.
Publications this semester averaged 6.4 stories per week, up from 4.3 last fall. Publication weekly averages ranged from a high of 15.0 (Southwestern with just a one-week publication window) to a low of just 1.3 (Grossmont with a 10-week publication window).
Publication windows, or adjusted weeks, are measured from the first week of a semester when the publication had two or more posts in the same week (Monday through Sunday) to the last week of the semester when the publication had two or more posts. (Loner posts outside those windows, however, are included in overall totals for the publication.) No adjustments are made for holidays as some publications continue to publish during those times. Publication windows ranged from one (Southwestern and Rio Hondo), to 21 (Butte). The statewide average was 12.4 weeks.
Pasadena led all publications in the number of posts this semester with 227. The low was just eight (Rio Hondo and Sierra). The average per publication for the semester was 80.3.
Campus-focused stories were most prevalent with 70.4 percent of all stories. General/neither focus accounted for 20.0 percent of stories and community-focused stories just 9.7 percent.
News was the most common genre of stories, accounting for 45.6 percent, followed by feature stories (21.5 percent), sports (18.8 percent), and opinion (14.2 percent).
Wednesdays continue to be the most popular day to post stories, with 25.2 percent posted mid-week. Mondays are the next most popular with 18.6 percent. Tuesdays (13.6 percent) eked out Fridays (13.5 percent) and weekends (Saturday + Sunday) (13.4 percent).
Nearly half of all stories (48.8 percent) are posted in the afternoon between noon and 5:59 p.m. Most of the rest are fairly evenly split between mornings (6 a.m. to 11:59 a.m.) (22.4 percent) and evenings (6 p.m. to midnight) (22.6 percent). A paltry 3.1 percent were posted in the wee hours of 12:01 a.m. to 5:59 a.m.
There were posts from some publication every day from Aug. 1 to Dec. 31 except for eight days in early August and three in late December. Twenty-three days saw 50 or more statewide posts, 11 of those on Wednesdays. The most active days saw 91 statewide posts; this happened twice, once on a Monday (Dec. 9) and once on a Wednesday (Nov. 20). There were eight days with just one post, most of them in early August. On average, there were 27.1 posts per day throughout the semester.
Unique visitors for those sites measurable (52 of 53 possible) were an average of 332.6k per month. (Note: December results were not available at the time this was first shared, but will be included in the final document.) and ranged from a high of 22.0k monthly (Fullerton) to a low of 0.2k (Glendale, which for some reason was measurable only one of the five months). Dormant sites continue to draw visitors.
Posting leaders
While the publication average for the semester was 80.3 posts, there were 14 publications with triple-digit posts. Pasadena was the only publication with 200-plus posts.
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Weekly averages
It goes to reason that those publications with the most posts probably also led in weekly averages, though that is not always the case because of varying publication windows. Southwestern, for instance, led all publications with a weekly average of 15.0 posts per week, but it had just one publication week. Los Medanos, with 13 weeks, was second with a 14.1 per week average. Nine publications averaged 10 or more posts per week.
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Posting patterns
The ideal posting pattern for a student publication is multiple times per week, every week. But that is not the case for every publication. Statewide, publications posted 37.2 percent of possible days (posts/adjusted weeks x 7 days), or between two and three days a week. But some publications are still treating their web publication as an adjunct to their print publication and tend to post in batches once a week or once every other week.
Eleven publications posted 50.0 percent or more of possible days (equivalent to three-plus days per week). This was an increase from last fall when only four did and last spring when nine did.
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Those publications that post infrequently tend to have excessive gaps of six or more days between posts, often followed by days with excessive posts of six or more posts in a day.
San Francisco had the most excessive gaps in the semester with eight (average 13.4 days), Chabot followed with six (average 13.5 days). Four publications had five gaps. The average gap was 9.8 days. Nine publications, including the two with just one week publication windows, had no gaps at all and many of those with just one had them around the Thanksgiving holiday. Forty-two publications had at least one gap.
Excessive-posts days most often occur after gaps, but not exclusively. Some of the publications with no gaps followed with excessive posts because they simply had that many stories to post. Twenty-nine publications had at least one excessive-post day. Bakersfield had the most with 12 (avg.9.2). Pasadena had 10 (avg.12.7). The average excessive posts was 9.8 days with the highest being 20 posts by Saddleback with just one excessive post.
Late posts
Posts were recorded for the date they appeared in an RSS feed, which was checked daily. Most web systems timestamp posts with a creation date that also shows up in the RSS feed. Posts that showed up four or more days after the creation date were tagged as being late posts. This allowed for publications to go through a regular, but timely editing process.
This semester saw an increase in late posts, starting in early August when one publication posted a batch of stories created in late May.
Fifteen publications had a total of 52 late posts. Seven of those were lone instances, but one publication (Southwestern) had 14. Chabot had eight, Los Medanos had six, San Francisco five, and Santa Ana four.
Campus governance
A solid student publication is a watchdog over its governments. At the college level the most relevant campus governments are the board of trustees, student government, and the faculty senate. But they also include administration, unions, and various other shared governance bodies, from student inter-club councils, to curriculum committees, to college-wide councils, to classified senates, to foundation boards, and more.
Two hundred and seventeen stories, or about just 5.2 percent of all stories, this semester covered campus governance, many of those tied into the general or campus student elections.
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Santa Barbara was the clear leader in covering campus governance with 32 stories, though Laney (n. 22), and El Camino (n.19) also had strong coverage. Twelve publications had no campus governance coverage at all.
Boards of trustees are the most covered campus governance bodies. One hundred and twenty-two, or 54.8 percent of all campus governance stories, covered the trustees (one story equally covered both the board and the faculty union). Laney (n.16) tends to cover its board voraciously.
Santa Barbara is the leader in covering student government with 11 stories. (Not all stories mentioning student government were counted. For instance, saying that the student government was a sponsor of a campus event is not covering campus governance; typically governmental body meetings did.) More than one in five campus governance stories (22.6 percent) covered student government.
Santa Barbara also led in faculty senate coverage with six stories. Just 9.7 percent of campus governance stories covered faculty senate.
Campus opinion
Another hallmark of a solid student publication is serving as a campus opinion and marketplace of ideas leader through campus opinion stories. Sadly, more than a third of campus publications (n.19) had NO campus opinion stories at all. Another six had just one campus opinion story.
Campus opinion stories included editorials, columns, and letters-to-the-editor that covered campus issues. Merely mentioning the college, or students in general, as being concerned with a general student-related topic did not qualify. In addition, all "roving reporter" stories were counted as campus opinion, regardless of the question, because they involved campus sources.
American River and DeAnza led all publications in campus opinion, with 13 each. Santa Barbara and Pierce were right behind with 12 and El Camino with 11.(Subjectively, Long Beach had the most frequent poignant campus opinion stories.)
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Campus sports
Athletics is a component of virtually every college in the state, with the exception of Calbright, which is California's online-only college. Yet, community college athletics is often ignored by the non-student press, especially in large metro areas. They were also ignored this semester by eight student publications.
Covering campus sports accounted for 18. percent of all student publication stories. Cosumnes River allocated the largest percentage (31.3 percent) of its stories to campus sports and Cerritos had the most overall campus sports stories (n.47).
Women's sports coverage outpaced men's coverage this fall for the first time since this project began. (In counting sports stories for this section of the report all sports were covered, hence a roundup covering multiple sports would be counted multiple times. Roundups were a print publication tool that, in most cases, does not make sense online.)
Gender is not relevant in all sports stories, but where it was relevant there were 364 women's sports stories (51.4 percent) and 344 men's sports stories (48.6 percent).
Men's football received the most coverage (n.136), but it becomes interesting when you compare sports that have both men's and women's teams. Women received more coverage than their men's counterparts in water polo, soccer, and golf, while men's coverage outpaced women's in basketball and cross country.
Multimedia
Four categories of multimedia were measured: Audio, video, photo gallery (widget), and other. (A fifth "could have been" category was also measured, see subsection on multimedia below.) Forty-two publications had at least one story containing multimedia: some stories had multiple multimedia components. Overall, 626 stories (15.1 percent) contained multimedia.
The most common was the photo gallery presented in widget form. The smallest category was "other," which included interactive maps, animated graphics, polls/surveys, quizzes, serial stories, timelines, and downloadable 'zines. Also included were issuu/yumpa animated presentations of complete issues of print publications. While there were only 22 "other multimedia" stories, this marked a significant increase from previous semesters.
Santa Rosa led in use of multimedia with 68 audio, video, and gallery presentations. It also used audio (n.13) more than any other publication. San Diego City led in use of video (n.35). Santa Monica (n.65) led in use of photo galleries. Santa Ana (n.6) led in use of other multimedia.
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Spanish
A minor, but growing, trend is to include foreign language versions of stories for readers. While Portuguese- (Pierce) and Ukrainian- (San Diego Mesa, later changed to English) language stories have appeared, Spanish is the most common foreign language story. Most Spanish stories were first posted in English and were followed days later with the Spanish version.
Six publications ran 33 stories in Spanish this semester. They included San Diego City (n.14), Contra Costa (n.9), Palomar (n.4) Fresno (n.3), Pierce (n.2), and Santa Rosa (n.1).
A consideration for those who run both English and foreign language stories is to include linkbacks from BOTH the English to foreign versions AND foreign to English versions. (A practice that should be replicated in pro-con opinion pieces.)
Study abroad
Study abroad programs largely were mothballed during the pandemic, but clearly are making a comeback based on campus stories this semester. Nineteen colleges ran a total of 45 stories about study abroad programs. These stories are different from long-time common fare news and feature stories about international students studying here (n.14).
Santa Rosa had the most robust collection of study abroad stories (n.21) as it tapped into a group of journalism students studying in London.
Cultural topics
Movies, stage, music, television, computer games, and other cultural news, feature, and music stories and reviews continue to be popular topics for stories. These stories are most likely to be included in arts and entertainment categories. Posts cover both campus and commercial product stories and reviews. Categorizing "reviews" continues to be the most subjective task in this project. Many reviews either contain little to no opinion, and thus should be classified as features or news, or bury opinion deep into stories.
Music, whether an album review or a campus concert, was the topic most often. Movies are right behind. Campus theater and art, however, is more likely to be covered than community or general stories.
Notable collections
There were several notable campus-project collections of stories that stand out from standard fare. They include:
· Election coverage by San Diego City. These stories tied into a campus election awareness project and were collected under a special site election category.
· Define American series by Los Medanos. This project was intended to feature the immigrant stories of the Contra Costa community in hopes of highlighting the misconceptions behind immigration and redefining what it means to be American.
· Downloadable 'zines by Santa Ana. The 'zines repackaged key news stories from the semester.
· Photo "galleries" by Pasadena's Anastasia Kiek. She posted a series of feature story photos series that ran as many as 84 photos in long scrolls. (see the multimedia subsection below; these photos could have been better presented in gallery widget format.)
Election coverage
Undoubtedly, one of the reasons Fall 2024 saw an increase in posts over last fall was election coverage. Just more than 400 stories, or close to one in 10, were based either on the general election or student government elections. Most publications (n.50, all but three) had at least one election story.
Note: After releasing this section of the report separately online one adviser contacted me to say I undercounted that publication’s election stories. The “missing” stories turned out to be video stories added to a static multimedia section page rather than as individual posts: the videos themselves rested in the site’s YouTube channel. But this project only looks at the RSS feed of the site, and tweaks to static pages do not show up in RSS feeds. A visual look at the site’s multimedia page would have shown the changes, but harvesting directly from the website is too time consuming and is done ONLY for two websites that do not support standard RSS feeds. And, as the multimedia page on this site was an inside page, the additions might have been missed in any case.
A detailed content analysis of election stories is beyond the scope of this project. News, opinion, and feature stories covered everything from where to vote, how to vote, and why to vote. Some stories focused on a specific bond measure, board of trustee candidate, local measure, local candidate, state measure, or national issue or candidate while others were all-encompassing. Election stories started appearing as early as August and ran through late December.
More than 100, or a quarter, were post-election stories, often including campus reaction to the Presidential selection.
Included in these numbers were a few student government elections that were held at campuses. Not included were stories about student governments filling empty seats with appointed officers, something common to most campus student governments.
To help analyze the stories, short of dissecting each for scope of coverage, posts were scoured for campus tie ins. Whether a story focused on a campus candidate or bond measure or was all encompassing, it was categorized as a campus story if even one sentence was tied to the campus, either about a candidate/measure or campus reaction. If not, it was then reviewed to see if there was a portion that dealt with a community issue or candidate; if so, it was categorized as community focused. All other stories that covered statewide issues or candidates or national issues or candidates were classified as "neither."
While student government elections are, by definition, campus focused, they were singled out as being hyper-campus focused. There were few student government election stories, just five. And one of those included board of trustees information as well.
There were 218.5 stories (54.0 percent) based on campus candidates/issues; some of these included information on local polling places. About a quarter (26.9 percent) were focused on state/national issues; this included a number of opinion stories about the candidates for President or about the Presidential debates. One in five (actually 18.0 percent) were categorized as community-focused stories.
When an election story appeared seemed appropriate to examine. Four time periods were tracked: August-September, October, the first week of November right before the general election, and post election.
October was, logically, the best month to write pre-election stories for the general election. Just over 38.8 percent (n.157) were posted in October. But a quarter (n. 101, 24.9 percent) were post-election stories. And 89, or about one in five (22.0 percent) were posted during the six days prior to the election (Nov. 7 stories were considered post election).
San Diego City saw an obvious campus-wide awareness campaign, and the City Times became an integral part of that campaign with its state-wide leading 42 stories. Los Medanos slipped into second with 25. Other leaders were Fullerton (n.20), Santa Rosa (n.20), and San Joaquin Delta (n.20).
• FIve publications had just one election story of any kind.
• Southwestern broke its near semester non-posting streak with an out-of-the-blue election story;
• Sierra, which normally does not post anything until the end of the semester, posted one mid-semester election story in late October; and
• Rio Hondo, which was dormant for the bulk of the semester, posted seven board of trustee video interviews in October.
MULTIMEDIA
While all student publications put most or all of their print content online, an online publication is a SEPARATE publication and should offer its readers something beyond print. Otherwise, the online publication is merely a morgue for the print edition. There are a number of ways to provide online-specific content, but the most common is to tell or enhance stories with multimedia.
Online Elsewhere measured four categories of multimedia: audio, video, photo galleries, and other. A fifth category that was also measured could be called "could-have-been" multimedia; these were stories presented with three or more photos that could have been presented as photo galleries using a gallery widget.
I also looked at multimedia presentations through three separate lenses: presented with a story, presented with just an introductory paragraph, and presented "naked" with no explanation beyond headlines and cutlines. Only a couple of publications --Cerritos and San Diego City-- routinely include transcripts with audio or video stories; for the purposes of this study, a transcript counted the same as a story.
Thirty-six publications had at least one multimedia presentation, but 17 had none. The most common multimedia presentation included a photo gallery (through widget), followed by video and audio. But there were more than 350 stories --more than all other multimedia combined-- that presented text with three or more photos outside of widgets. (See discussion below.)
Santa Rosa presented the most multimedia stories, through the most diverse methods. It used a variety of audio, video and galleries. It led in audio stories/podcasts (n.13), was second in use of photo galleries (n.56) and was sixth using video stories (n.14). Santa Monica led with photo galleries (n.65) and San Diego City led in use of video stories (n.35).
Audio
Only 12 publications presented stories using audio, and many of those were in podcast form instead of enhancing regular stories. Some "podcasts" obviously were audio and were staged through third-party apps like SoundCloud or Spotify, while others were presented through YouTube and could also be mistaken as video stories. For the purposes of this study if a static image appeared throughout the multimedia presentation it was defined as audio, whereas if it included talking heads it was counted as video.
There were just 57 audio stories, compared to 173 video stories and 373 galleries. One story included five audio snippets. While the whole story might be included in the audio itself, such as with a podcast, readers need to have some clue, beyond a headline, as to the content to help them decide whether to invest their time listening. This can be accomplished with an introductory paragraph, but is even better when accompanied with a related story. The introductory paragraph was the preferred method for 27 of the 57 audio stories. Full stories were next most preferred (n.23). But six were presented naked.
The audio portions of presentations averaged 24 minutes and 26 seconds. The longest audio was one hour, 21 minutes and 27 seconds. The shortest was one minute and six seconds.
Twenty-four stories were campus related, seven community related, and 26 neither.
Video
San Diego City (n.38) and Canyons (n.33) were the clear leaders in use of video. Canyons clearly embraced video as 91.7 percent of its stories included video and a story. Fullerton was third (n.16). Twenty-nine, more than half, of all publications had at least one video story.
Overall, there were 175 video stories. Seven stories included two videos and four included three videos. Two-thirds (n.116, 67.1 percent) of video presentations were accompanied with a text story of two more paragraphs and 26 with an introductory paragraph. That meant that 32 (18.5 percent or nearly one in five), were presented naked.
The average video presentation was eight minutes and 19 seconds. The longest was more than two hours long (2:08:01) and the shortest was just 28 seconds. Twenty-two were less than one minute long. There were 11 stories with multiple videos, and they most often included videos less than one minute long, usually closer to a half minute.
Ninety-nine stories (57.2 percent) were campus related, 61 (32.5 percent) were community related, leaving just 13 related to neither.
Galleries
The easiest form of multimedia for publications, used by about half the publications, is the photo gallery; more COULD have used galleries (see the section below). About 9.0 percent of all stories (n. 372) included at least one photo gallery. Thirty-six of those stories included two or more photo galleries, with one containing seven galleries in the same story.
Santa Monica was the leader in use of galleries with 65, with Santa Rosa in second with 56. Twenty-seven publications, or about half, had at least one gallery.
The average photo gallery included 6.7 photos, but at least one had 32. Several had just one photo, which begs the question "why?". The most common number was five photos.
Three-quarters of stories (76.6 percent) with photo galleries were campus related, 53 (14.2 percent) were community related, and 34 (9.1 percent) were not related to either.
Other multimedia
The fourth and least used category of multimedia was "other," which included interactive maps, animated graphics, polls/surveys, quizzes, serial stories, timelines, and downloadable 'zines. Also included were issuu/yumpa animated presentations of complete issues of print publications, though, functionally, only two publications include them any more, at least as stand-alone stories; this does not include widget-based inclusions. (Cerritos continues to post complete PDF issues and single PDF pages for portfolio reasons, but these were not included as multimedia.)
Only about a quarter of publications (n. 13) bother with "other" multimedia, though there are more and more online tools for creating them. There were just 27 "other" multimedia story presentations. Santa Ana had five stories, downloadable 'zines. Santa Monica had four with its issuu presentations. (In past semesters more publications included issuu/yumpa presentations, but it is not uncommon for such presentations to be made in batches near the end of the semester or end of the school year. Again, this begs the question of "why?" If these posts are important, why wait months to publish them; it is a morgue situation. Los Medanos does the same thing with editorial cartoons.)
"Could have been" multimedia
The phantom of multimedia is the story with three or more photos that coulda/shoulda been presented through a gallery widget instead of applying print-centric layout principles with photo layout. Not all stories with three or more photos require a widget presentation, but once you hit that mark, it is time to think about using a widget.
For instance, even with print principles it is considered bad design to place a photo in a way that causes the reader to jump over a photo to continue reading the story. Instead, it is better to place photos in such a way that the text flows around the photo without requiring a leap. (How annoying it is to have to leap over photos and ads!) That can work online, but since practically all online story presentations are in one wide column, running full-size/full-width photos get in the way. It is common to place a photo at the top of the story and possibly at the bottom, but everything else in between requires a wraparound to maintain readability in design.
Instead, most publications present their multiple photos inappropriately, and sometimes with horrendous results. And it is common: Forty publications ran at least one story with three or more photos outside of a widget; most of the remaining publications typically run just one photo or no photos with stories. And they did it 580 times, or approximately once every seven stories. The average presentation had 6.5 photos, but went as high as 84 photos. Encouragingly, with 205 of those 580 stories, publications used ONLY three photos.
The phantom of multimedia is the story with three or more photos that coulda/shoulda been presented through a gallery widget instead of applying print-centric layout principles with photo layout. Not all stories with three or more photos require a widget presentation, but once you hit that mark, it is time to think about using a widget.
For instance, even with print principles it is considered bad design to place a photo in a way that causes the reader to jump over a photo to continue reading the story. Instead, it is better to place photos in such a way that the text flows around the photo without requiring a leap. (How annoying it is to have to leap over photos and ads!) That can work online, but since practically all online story presentations are in one wide column, running full-size/full-width photos get in the way. It is common to place a photo at the top of the story and possibly at the bottom, but everything else in between requires a wraparound to maintain readability in design.
Instead, most publications present their multiple photos inappropriately, and sometimes with horrendous results. And it is common: Forty publications ran at least one story with three or more photos outside of a widget; most of the remaining publications typically run just one photo or no photos with stories. And they did it 580 times, or approximately once every seven stories. The average presentation had 6.5 photos, but went as high as 84 photos. Encouragingly, with 205 of those 580 stories, publications used ONLY three photos. (For this study, no distinction was made between photos, illustrations and infographics.)
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El Camino and Butte each did it with 60 of their stories; Pasadena (n.51) and DeAnza (n.41) followed. Pasadena had the highest average (avg. 22.1) and the most photos in one presentation (n.84).
It was not uncommon for publications to run multiple photos AND a gallery in the same story. Some publications, like Butte, peppered multiple photos and multiple galleries in a print layout style in the same story.
Multiple photos are used mostly with campus-related stories (87.4 percent), but show up near equally in community-based stories (17.3 percent) and "neither" stories (16.4 percent).
El Camino and Butte each did it with 60 of their stories; Pasadena (n.51) and DeAnza (n.41) followed. Pasadena had the highest average (avg. 22.1) and the most photos in one presentation (n.84).
Multiple photos are used mostly with campus-related stories (87.4 percent), but show up near equally in community-based stories (17.3 percent) and "neither" stories (16.4 percent).
WORD COUNTS
When I was a student reporter some 50-plus years ago and received an assignment from an editor, my first two questions —almost always— were "How long does it have to be?" and "When is it due?" Throughout my 40-plus years of advising student publications those were the same most common questions I noticed from my students. (The third most question tended to be a version of "Where should I get information for this story?")
I measured the number of words in each of the 4,148 stories from this semester using the Word Count function of Microsoft Word. Only the body of the story (including subheads) were counted. Excluded were headlines, bylines, corrections, photos, cutlines, advertisements, and most infographics. One hundred and sixty-seven stories from 35 publications had NO text left after those exclusions. In most cases it was because of the way a multimedia story was presented —naked, without any explanatory text. In a small number of cases it was because the story had been deleted or was otherwise uncountable, for instance, in one case the story was presented solely as a graphic.
Stories across the state averaged 546.7 words. The longest story was 5,066 words.
Laney had the largest average, clocking in at 946.2 words. Rio Hondo had the lowest average with 199.1 words.
Cerritos had the most nulls with 37, followed by Los Medanos with 13 and Santa Rosa with 12. In Cerritos' case, many of these were the single-page and complete-issue PDFs it posts for portfolio purposes after each print edition. Many of Los Medanos' were editorial cartoons. Most of Santa Rosa's were video stories posted without explanatory text.
To further understand statewide trends, the stories were then sorted into seven length groups. Just over a quarter of stories (n.1344, 26.5 percent) were between 300 and 500 words.
The following charts show the averages and distribution for each publication, listed from highest average to lowest.
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Potential News Year/Semester Resolutions
(Originally published in an email to the JACC faculty listserv in December 2024)
In the spirit of the New Year/New semester, here are some suggested New Year's Resolutions for student publications. There's probably at least one possibility for every student publication in the state.
1. Post regularly and frequently. Aim for twice a week, minimum, every week, including holiday weeks like Spring Break.
2. Post stories in a timely fashion with digital-first, print-second in mind. This means that by the time the print edition hits the stands (or gets sent to the printer) stories should already be posted.
3. Avoid posting in batches. Come on print-first publications, you know who you are. Time to enter the modern day of journalism. If you are posting more than five stories in one day (with rare exceptions), you are a batch poster.
Some publications appear to have just one person posting all stories, usually in batches. A good goal would be to transition into
a) writers creating their stories into your Wordpress site with their own login account,
b) have editors edit the story for both print and online in your Wordpress site, and
c) activate the story before it ever gets to a printed page.
4. Include more photos. Many publications post just one photo at the top of the story or no photo at all on most or all of their stories. We have entered a new visual age and almost everyone carries a camera (in their phones) with them anyway.
Good goals would be:
· If you routinely run no photos with a story, try adding just one photo or illustration to as many stories as possible.
· If you routinely run just one photo first ask if you are creating your own or getting them from elsewhere, then aim for two photos for at least half your stories (a lot of publications routinely run just two photos, usually one at the top and another in the middle or near the bottom.
· If you routinely run three or more photos, consider using a gallery widget rather than falling back to a print-style layout.
5. Avoid pulling all or most of your photos from other sources. Okay, if you are writing about Wicked you are going to want to include a publicity photo from the movie company, but keep such efforts to a minimum.
6. Jettison print layout concepts when using multiple photos. Online presentation is different than print. Try using galleries widgets for smarter presentation of three or more photos.
7. Include more campus opinion pieces. And if you must opine on an off-campus topic of interest to a campus community, try localizing the opinion piece: in most cases it is going to make your argument stronger.
8. Localize stories more. Some publications cover a lot of cultural issues they think will interest the campus community. They may be correct, but localizing the stories will make them even more relevant. If you can't localize most of your stories --either tying them to campus or your campus-adjacent community-- reconsider your story selection process. Non-localized stories should be the exception, not the rule.
9. Become more familiar with your campus sports programs. And cover them. I was in a campus newsroom the other day and overheard a discussion about professional sports among staff members. As a former sports reporter myself I could not help but wonder how much better their sports coverage would be if they talked about the campus programs with even half as much knowledge as they exhibited about professional sports.
10. Eliminate sports (and news) roundups. They make sense only as a print layout tool. They were created to group small stories into larger text blocks. Design is different online. A one-sentence story is a story, and is easier for the reader to find if you run it separately. Besides, if you start running the stories separately, you'll find yourself adding more to your stories (and making them better) over time.
11. Cover campus governance. One of the traditional roles of news publications is to serve as a watchdog over local governance. You can't do that if you are not watching on a regular basis. Three biggies that should be covered every week/meeting are student government, boards of trustees, and faculty senates. (A little known secret is that even if you don't write about the meeting you are likely to walk away with other story ideas.)
But don't forget other governance bodies: administration, unions, and various other shared governance groups on campus, including the college's foundation. And don't just observe from a distance, followup with interviews after meetings.
12. Include more multimedia. Your online publication should offer more than your print publication can/does. Part of this is regular and frequent posting of stories, but multimedia (and well-designed infographics, BTW) are something you can easily add. Some publications NEVER run multimedia. Start simple: consider presenting three or more photographs, illustrations, and infographics within a photo gallery widget. But also consider audio stories/podcasts, video stories, and other interactive graphics. Audio can include snippets from interviews, podcasts. These days, you can and should include transcripts. Video can include stand-alone presentations (but see the next resolution) or full interviews. Likewise, you should consider transcripts with video stories, its gotten so much easier to do.
There is an increasing trend across the state to include multiple galleries or videos in a single story. There are times when that makes sense, but most often it is because publications are simply trying to break up large blocks of text like they do with print layout. That's the wrong reason to do so.
13. Consider campus- or community-related topics over national or cultural topics. You may know, or think you know more about those issues than local stories, but you'll become a better reporter by taking on the challenging local stories. Who cares what you think about that popular TV show or sports team?
14. This one is important: When you run multimedia, give the reader more than a headline to know what is included. A paragraph will do, but a short story is better. Many readers will not venture into your gallery, audio, or video if they don't know what is there. Would you present yourself naked?
15. Increase your weekly output. Some publications post double-digit stories every week, but the statewide average is only about 4.5. If you have a staff of just 10, that means that at least half the staff wrote nothing that week. (Stop letting an every-other-week, or less often, print schedule dictate deadlines!) About half of these resolutions will inadvertently help you increase output. When you are working for the New York Times you can spend weeks working on just one story, but your first jobs are likely to be at publications where you are expected to produce more each week or day.
16. Consider more community stories. Some publications pride themselves on covering their campus communities only while some seem to prefer covering anything but their campus. Student publications are COMMUNITY publications, as opposed to metro publications like most dailies. Community publications should cover their communities, but "community" can include campus-adjacent stories that impact or are of interest to your students.
If you go beyond your campus-adjacent community, however you define that, keep Resolution No. 8 in mind. There is nothing wrong with covering regional, statewide, national, or international stories/issues, but they should not take the place of local coverage.
17. Include more sources with your stories. If covering a campus story, make sure to include campus sources. If you are not talking to sources, you are not growing as a reporter. Yes, I know a lot of campus sources avoid talking to the campus press: but you need to find a way to get them to trust you again. If covering community stories, first try to find relevant campus sources, but community sources (with full names and ids) are important, too.
One of the challenges in covering non-campus/non-community stories is finding actual sources to talk to: it is so much easier to simply summarize sources from other publications. One day, when journalism is your profession, you will be the one writing those stories lazy reporters summarize; learn to be the best reporter you can be now. Yes, I know, talking to sources is perhaps the hardest part of the job; all the more reason to get better at it now.
(Every once in a while have your staff use a highlighter on a printed copy of your stories to mark the first time a source --whether one a reporter talked to or one from another publication. Use a different colored highlighter for real sources and other borrowed sources; this has the impact of showing :
a) whether you routinely include sources,
b) where in the story you introduce them,
c) how many sources you routinely include, and
d) what kinds of sources you use.
Follow up with a group discussion about sources and how you use them.)
18. Keep yourself out of stories. There is an increasing trend toward first-person experience stories. Some are interesting, but other than sharing your story, you don't build reporting skills with first-person stories. And no one cares if you were "pleased to interview" a source, or found your first board of trustees meeting "a fantastic and informative experience." The story is not about you.
19. Consider more listicle articles. Listicle features online get read. Notice the headline for this list: Putting numbers in headlines helps. "Five movies for the holidays" will get more readers than "Holiday movies."
20. Look at peer publications regularly. Identify which student publications you like and would like to emulate or compete against. Spy on their sites regularly. Steal story ideas and other innovations.
21. Look to see what is happening elsewhere with local topics. Some of the best stories I see are ones that talk about campus issues, but include facts (and sometimes quotes from sources) from nearby or similar colleges. Doing so puts your story into more perspective for both you and your reader. Too often we look at our own publications with blinders on.
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Have a great spring semester and always push yourself to get even better than you already are. Often this will include changing the status quo on how and when stories are produced. Change is not easy, but often is necessarily for growth.
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