Spring 2026 Online Elsewhere Report
Online Elsewhere
End-of-semester Report
Spring 2026
By Richard Cameron
Spring 2026 was anything but a dull semester for California community college student online news publications. Fifty-one online publications posted just under 5,000 stories that not only covered regular campus news but:
- A cyberattack that closed down Canvas across the country right as many colleges were entering their finals.
- A crowded statewide primary gubernatorial election.
- Student government elections, several of which had to be tossed out or were otherwise controversial, largely because of lack of transparency by school officials.
- A variety of music festivals across the state.
- Increasing rancor over the use of artificial intelligence programs, especially in the classroom.
- The advent of women's flag football in community college sports.
- Fallout from the Ceasar Chavez revelations of sexual harassment as colleges, and cities scrambled to rename buildings and remove murals.
- A crackdown on DEI programs in colleges by the Trump administration.
- The continuation of a controversial war in Israel/Gaza and start of a new controversial war in Iran, and
- Runaway inflation caused by the military actions in Iran, including a spike in gasoline prices.
- The ascension of the first classes of community college bachelor’s degree graduates.
This was the eleventh semester of the Online Elsewhere project, which started Spring 2020 as a one-semester research project and was expanded after the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic hit mid-semester and transformed education delivery across the country overnight. In many ways the story unfolding in community college publications has unfolded like many others in the country since then: Publications took a hit in the number of stories it was producing before Spring 2020 (though no baseline before that semester has been established to verify that claim) and has been slowly working its way back up toward pandemic level numbers but is still far short: we may never see pandemic-level numbers again.
For Spring 2026 the 51 student publications posted 4,928 stories between Jan. 1 and June 15, the spring window typically measured. This was a healthy 7.4 percent increase over Spring 2025, but as the chart below shows, while there is a steady increase in numbers, they fall significantly lower than Spring 2020 when publication courses were forced into remote operation and Spring 2021 when most publications were fully remote for the entire semester. Story numbers took a big hit when instruction came back to campus but have shown healthy “new era” performance increases each semester/year since. The 2025-26 school year was down just a bit but holds steady overall.
Online Elsewhere is QUANTITATIVE evaluation of California community college student ONLINE news publications that looks at the numbers of stories written by each publication and a breakdown of story styles and localizations. It also looks at other metrics, such as days and times stories are posted, source use (including numbers and kinds), and in-story linkage, use of multimedia, and coverage of campus governance. The work involves monitoring all of the state's online publications on a daily basis throughout much of the year.
The project includes monthly written summaries and observations distributed to campus publications through their faculty advisers, comprehensive semester reports about publications statewide, and, when requested, special speaking presentations to individual publication staffs.
The goal is to improve community college student journalism across the state and help each publication see how it compares to others through more than a hundred metrics, though each publication is free to use or ignore the comparisons as each sees fit.
Previous end-of-semester reports can be found online at:
Previous semester 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/4ePR0It
• Spring 2024 - https://bit.ly/3VYo9Kc
• Fall 2024 - https://bit.ly/3ChM68H
• Spring 2025 – http://bit.ly/46uUEpu
• Fall 2025 - https://bit.ly/49eY68B (pdf) or Online Elsewhere Reports (web)
• Spring 2026 - https://bit.ly/Sp26Report (PDF) or Online Elsewhere Reports web version
In addition to recording stories and their genres and localizations, for spring I once again report on numbers and types of sources, report on use of in-story links, track campus governance coverage, and track photo usage and more.
This report also again includes publication-by-publication reports. Redesigned content spreadsheets for each publication contain more data than ever on each publication for the semester and in previous semesters. Included on each are several presentation grades.
Artificial intelligence software built into Microsoft Excel —CoPilot©— was again used to help analyze how each publication compared to others in the state. A calendar-style spreadsheet is included for each publication that tracked posting patterns for the publication throughout the semester. And, finally, starting with this report there is a publication-by-publication index so that publications can find where they are mentioned.
Note: This presentation inlcudes the first half of the final report. Not included here are multi-page evaluations of each publication --publication by publication-- that inlcudes analysis, numbers reports, posting patterns and a summary of ranks. These may be accessed by downloading the full report from https://bit.ly/Sp26Report..
Terms and Definitions
As with any research project of this size, it is important to define terms used to make categorizations. Most of these definitions have applied consistently over the semesters of the project, but new terms or minor definition tweaks are added each semester.
Posts
Any post was considered for inclusion unless it was an obvious duplicate post or was an obvious test post. 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 no adjustment was made, as deletions could be made any time, even months or years after original publication.
Publication
The term “publication” is used in place of “newspaper” as not all online publications are “newspapers.” Some are becoming news magazines and often print magazines are folded into the “newspaper” website. In California there are 116 official colleges, which includes one online-only campus; there are additional satellite campuses at some college districts that may someday become standalone colleges. Not all community colleges have journalism programs or campus newspapers/publications.
Of those that do, 51 had active sites this spring. Three others that were active within the last year had no posts this spring while one other had minimal posts and did not even qualify as having an adjusted publication widow (see Adjusted Weeks/Publication Window below for a definition).
Only the online site was monitored for this study. Many of the publications no longer have print versions or have reduced the frequency to as low as one per semester. At least one known print publication does not have an accompanying website.
Dates
When posts are originally created in the web platform, RSS feeds usually date-stamp the posts, even if it occasionally takes a couple of days for the post to appear in feeds. Since posts are recorded daily, official post dates are included. 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…or months), 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 if 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.
Not counted as late, though they clearly were, were stories that were ported from print to online in batches. There is no alternative way to measure when a story was created until it first shows up in the online platform as a draft.
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. At least one of these publications reports that it is switching to a platform this summer that supports standard RSS.
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; sports news, feature and opinion stories were categorized as “sports.” Next was News, then Opinion v. Feature.
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. First-person features sometimes contain minor opinion and are often classified as opinion stories by publications; for this story most were considered features.
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. If it included a campus source as a key source of campus information, it often was campus based. (Sometimes campus sources show up in community-based stories by accident.) Even national stories that contained local sources or details were determined to be campus based if the story attempted to reflect campus information. 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 universally, 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 service area 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 in the college’s service area, unless it was primarily a community issue story. “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 or elected leaders were used simply as sources).
Adjusted Weeks/Publication Window
While most colleges started their spring semesters in mid to late January or early February, not all do, and programs start actual publication at different times, regardless of when the term started. Some publications posted stories before the school term started while others took several weeks to get started. Many publications wrapped up the semester in mid-May, but some went until the data collection was cut off June 15. And some schools continued to publish during holiday/summer breaks, others did not. There was a total of 22 possible publishing weeks between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31 (fall semester) and 25 between Jan. 1 and June 15 (spring semester) this school year.
To create a standard method for determining weekly averages an “adjusted week/publication window” 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.
Sources
As each story was recorded sources were also counted. Only the first time a source is used in a story is it counted. If a source was mentioned but not quoted directly or indirectly it was not counted; in rare cases implied quotes might have been counted. In addition to the overall source count for stories, types of sources were counted. Five categories of sources were recognized:
1. Administrators (top management, including board of trustee members);
2. Campus employees (all other people working directly, from student employees to classified staff to certificated staff);
3. Current students;
4. Other campus sources, from guest speakers for vendors, to alumni or other live sources that could not be identified into other categories); and
5. “Other media” sources (from other media sites to people clearly quoted but not really interviewed).
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, board of trustees, administration policy, and other college governance groups/committees, including unions, and college foundations. 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 other animation or interactive tools. Also included were a shrinking number of animated issuu.com or yumpa.com or flipbook postings. Once common platforms for storing PDF documents, such as copies of print issues, many student publications have moved away from issuu.comafter new pricing policies made them difficult to afford.
Stories presented with three or more photos that could have, or perhaps should have, been presented in gallery form were tracked; they were not considered as multimedia, though unless a widget tool was used to present the photos.
For some publications, using a gallery with three or more photos might mean a smarter presentation, but not always. Also noted were 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.
In-story links
In-story links are live-linked and may consist of a URL or a connection to where a fact may be verified or discussed. Unlinked URLs were not counted. Typically, a URL needs to be linked only once in a story, but statewide policies vary. Every link was counted for each story.
Posting Patterns
Separate posting calendars were kept for each publication to show how many posts were made on which days. The reports that resulted highlighted excessive gaps —defined as six or more days— and excessive post days —defined as six or more posts on a single day. Only gaps within the publication window were counted.
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
More efforts in periodic reports and this report convert that percentage to a more relatable days-per-week figure.
Weekly Average
The weekly story average was determined by dividing the total number of posts/stories by the number of adjusted weeks. The state average was an anemic 5.5 stories per week.
Disclaimer
No determination on quality of stories or publications was made, as this was not a goal of the study since standard definitions of “quality” have not been determined. 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 ranks 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: 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.
Spring summary
Fifty-one student publications had at least one post during the spring 2026 semester. For the semester there were 4,963 stories. More than two-thirds of stories were localized to
campus; over the years the percentage of stories localized to campus have slightly increased. For the spring there were nearly twice as many “neither” stories as there were community-focused stories, a pattern that has stayed relatively consistent over time.
As for story genre, news continues to outpace, as would be expected, but over time the percentage of news stories has decreased while feature stories have increased. It should be noted that in my categorization of stories I consider more stories to be feature stories than most news staffs might if they categorized them. The key is the focus of the story.
There were posts on all but three days the entire semester: Sunday, Jan. 4; Sunday, March 8; and Monday, June 15. On average there were 36.4 posts each day, with the highest production day being Monday, May 4, when 102 posts were made. There were three days in early January with just one post.
Leaders
Two publications ended with more than 200 posts. Cerritos had 265 and LongBeach ended with 236. San Jose, which never had two or more stories in one week, had the fewest number with just three for the semester.
The statewide average was 89.8 stories and the median was 71.0.
Localization
Two publications — Laney and San Jose— had 100 percent campus-related stories. Laney also led with news genre stories with 75.0 percent devoted to news.
Canyons led publications with percentage focused on community; just under half (49.1 percent) of its stories focused on community. Other community-focused leaders included Sierra (36.4 percent), Desert (32.9 percent), and Rio Hondo (29.8 percent). Statewide, just 10.8 percent community-based stories.
Mt. San Jacinto led all publications in “neither” stories, stories that neither focused on community nor campus. Nearly three in five (59.0 percent) of the Talon’s stories were “neither” stories. Other leaders were Butte (58.3 percent), East LA(40.8 percent), and Mt. San Antonio (37.4 percent).
Genre
Just more than four in 10 stories (41.0 percent) were news stories, the most common genre. Laney had the highest percentage of news stories with three out of four (75.0 percent) dedicated to news, most commonly centered around board of trustee actions. Other leaders were Cypress (68.8 percent), Santa Monica (66.7 percent), and San Diego City (60.2 percent).
The second most common genre was feature stories, which accounted for just more than one-quarter (26.3 percent). Sierra was the features leader with just more than four of five stories (81.8 percent) being features; this may be driven in large part by Sierra’s end-of-semester/fewer stories magazine approach to publishing. Runners-up included Foothill (58.1 percent), Saddleback (55.7 percent), and Grossmont (50.0 percent). Feature stories are the leading genre for “neither” localized stories; 30.8 percent, or nearly a third, of feature stories lack the campus or community localization, though definition of “community” might account for some of that (see definitions elsewhere on how community is defined; sometimes it is subjective on where to draw the line).
Third most common was sports, primarily campus sports with 18.2 percent of the total. Just two publications —Contra Costa and San Jose— had no sports stories, but for some publications sports stories practically rule the publication with more sports than news. The sports leader, for instance, Palomar saw 45.6 percent of its stories falling into the sports category, compared to just 35.1 percent leaning toward news. Santa Ana (second, 34.9 percent vs. 32.0 percent) and Fullerton (fourth, 31.3 percent vs. 29.8 percent) saw similar patterns. Orange Coast was third with 32.7percent sports.
Men’s baseball and women’s softball received much of the campus sports coverage. There were 261 baseball stories, more than twice the number of (softball stories n.121). Men’s and women’s basketball were next most popular.
There were also almost double men’s sports stories (61.6 percent) over women’s stories (38.4 percent) where gender was relevant; not all sports stories are sport or gender specific.
That leaves opinion stories. They accounted for 14.4 percent of all stories, but the real story with opinion stories is that “neither” opinion stories (9.8 percent) more than doubled the number of campus opinion stories (4.2 percent). Much of this can be attributed to movie, music album, tv show, video game, book and other critical reviews that almost always had no local or campus ties. East LA was one of the prime publications for reviews with more than a third of all its stories (36.2 percent) falling into the review category. Runnersup were Los Medanos (32.6 percent), Pierce (31.0 percent), and American River (30.3 percent).
| Pierce presents a unique situation when it comes to opinion stories. The Roundup is the only publication to regularly run pro-con articles, usually combined into jut one post. A large number of those opinion packages, along with other opinion stories, on first glance are campus opinion stories in that they state “Pierce should do x, y, or z…” and then follow with essay-style editorials that point out that the activity takes place at College A, College B, and College C, or were found to be beneficial with a study the college did, without taking into account any information on how such an activity would take shape at the college or why it is not currently taking place at the college; in other words, there is no real attempt to localize it. The Roundup is not the only publication to take this approach with editorials/opinion pieces, it just is one of the most obvious. |
Contrast that with publications like Long Beach, which sometimes follows a similar format, but includes campus specifics to back up its arguments, and El Camino, which frequently will call around to neighboring colleges and compare a campus issue with what is going on elsewhere. Campus opinion stories account for just 4.2 percent of all stories. Diablo Valley had the highest percentage of campus-localized opinion stories with 18.9 percent, or nearly one in five of all its stories. Southwestern, in second, had11.6 percent.
Campus governance
In addition to categorizing story by genre and by localization, specific categories of stories are also tracked, such as campus sports and campus governance. Ten publications, or about one in every 5.5, had no campus governance stories this semester and another seven had just one. Campus governance was further tracked by five governance groups: the board of trustees, the student government, the faculty/academic senate, administration, and other shared governance groups, including unions.
Student government accounted for the most campus governance coverage. There were 108 student government stories. These stories mostly covered actual meetings or student leader profiles (usually the student president or student trustee). Riverside (n.12), DeAnza (n.10), and Santa Barbara and Long Beach (n.9 each) were the leaders in covering student government. Not included were stories about routine campus events “sponsored” by student government.
Next most covered were boards of trustees. There were 65 stories about boards of trustees. Contra Costa was the clear leader in covering trustees with eight stories, though half of those were stories reported both in English and Spanish, so really only four. Laney, with its near obsession with covering its board, was second with six. San Francisco and Santa Barbara tied for third with five each.
Administration was third with 42 stories, led by DeAnza and Riverside with six each. Administration governance stories focused on policies and profiles, as opposed to meeting stories or general stories where an administrator was quoted or participated.
Fourth most covered were faculty senates with 34 stories. Santa Barbara was the clear leader with eight faculty senate stories. Runnersup were DeAnza (n.6), and Riverside and Pierce (n.5 each).
And, finally, all other campus shared government bodies were grouped into an “other” category. These included unions, classified senates, curriculum committees, college councils, budget and planning councils, college foundations, and other miscellaneous committees or task forces. There were 28 such stories.
Combined, the campus government leader was Santa Barbara with 29 stories (or about 23.0 percent of all of its stories), followed by Riverside (n.28), DeAnza (n.26), and Skyline (n.16).
Multimedia
Also tracked separately were multimedia stories, which were combined into four groups: audio; video; photo gallery (within a widget); and “other,” which ranged from interactive infographs, to animated issuu/yumpa/flipbook issue displays, to surveys, to scrollable PDFs, etc.
Another separate measure was made for stories that contained three or more photos/illustrations OUTSIDE of widget presentation. See below for a discussion of those observations. Twelve publications, or about a quarter, had NO multimedia at all, even where possible (such as including photos within a widget vs. print-style presentation).
Photo galleries, within widgets, were the most common multimedia used by publications. They appeared in 490 stories (9.9 percent) and sometimes multiple times within a story. The ruling monarch of galley use was Santa Monica, which included photo galleries in 71 stories (67.5 percent). Runnersup were Fullerton (n.58), Santa Rosa (n.55), and DeAnza (n.50).
After galleries was video use, which showed up in 297 stories (6.0 percent). Videos ranged from short original Instagram/TikTok embeds, to movie/video game trailers, to on-the-fly reporter-on-the-street interviews, to video podcasts, to full basketball game broadcasts, etc. It was not uncommon to see more than one video or a combination audio, video, galleries within the same story.
Again, there was a clear ruling monarch when it came to use of video. San Diego City used original video in 56 of its 103 stories (50.25 percent). It was not uncommon to see both video and extracted audio presented side by side in City Times stories. This unseated the previous video leader Canyons, who included video in 52 of its 57 stories (91.2 percent). DeAnza was third in use of video with 50 stories containing video; a major portion of which were its regular “Fact Friday” videos that summed up the week’s news on campus.
Combined, DeAnza ended up with the most multimedia with a total of 113 stories (53.1 percent) containing at least one of the formats. Santa Rosa edged out San Diego City for second, 103 stories to 102. Again, a quarter of publications had NO multimedia.
Photo galleries are the easiest way for publications to add multimedia to their stories as still photography is already a staple in news gathering and because so many students have access to the equipment needed, if only a cell phone.
But when should a photo gallery be used instead of spreading photos throughout the story as you would in print presentation? Online layout is different from print layout. With print layout space is limited and fewer photos tend to be used. Print layout allows for different sized photos and for variation in design. Attempting to recreate that same layout online does not work well in the limited template design used by most publications. Screens either fill up too quickly or photos tend to be too small. Some publications compensate for that by running photos essentially the same size and then stack them on top of each other, creating long scrolls for the reader; at some point in that process, you lose the reader.
The gallery widget makes online design much simpler by making all the photos essentially the same size and allows the reader to stay in one spot on the page while flipping through
The use of three or more photos seems to be the cutoff of when a publication should consider whether to use a widget or stick to a print-style layout. After three a print-style layout can start to create awkwardness in template presentation. It is a judgment call at that point.
Also observed and measured this semester was the use of multiple photos in stories that included three or more photos outside a widget. (Interestingly, some publications use a widget with just one or two photos, which usually looks odd. Also interesting are stories that include BOTH a widget AND multiple photos.) Nearly 80 percent of publications in the state (n.44) used three or more photos outside a widget at least once.
The publications that include three or more photos outside a widget the most are Long Beach (n.93), San Francisco(n.61), DeAnza (n.60), Santa Ana (n.49), Mt. San Antonio (n.47), El Camino (n.42), and Palomar (n.42). Those instances drop considerably when you exclude the stories with just three (the cutoff) photos.
Santa Barbara, Riverside, and Long Beach tied for the longest scrolls with stories that included 35 photos outside of a widget. Two publications included 29 photos. Ironically, the publication with the largest average in stories with three or more photos outside a widget was the same publication that used galleries more often than all others: Santa Monica included widgets in 71 of its 78 stories; those other six stories the Corsair averaged 16.6 photos.
Frequency
A key component to a strong online publication is how frequently it posts new stories. Some staffs produce a lot of stories while others struggle to publish only a few. Some publications are active for just one week during the semester while others publish nearly every week. So, a better way to view publications is how often they publish in a seven-day week. One or two stories a day can be more effective at building an online audience than 20 stories once every other week. Publications that post many stories infrequently are still following a print-centric mindset of print first, online second, instead of the other way around.
Fullerton led all publications with a 6.5 days-per-week average over 13 weeks. Sierra, which had an effective publication window of just one week, published 6.0 days. No publications averaged 5.0-plus days, though third-place Cuesta came close with a 4.9-day average over 19 weeks. Seven publications averaged in the 4.0-plus range, 12 in the 3.0-plus range, 13 in the 2.0-plus range, 16 in the 1.0-plus range, and three in less-than-1.0-day range. One publication –San Jose– could not be measured because it never had a qualifying week, even though it posted three days over the semester.
“Late” stories
If frequency is an important component for building a strong online publication, so is timeliness. Stories should appear online first. Also tracked are “late” stories, which are defined as showing up in the online feed three or more days after they were created within the online platform. This gives adequate time for timely and careful editing. Not marked as late, but which are just as bad, are stories that are ported over from print, usually AFTER print, in batches. They don’t show up as late because they often are posted the same day they were entered into the platform: all writing and editing took place with print in mind and online as an afterthought. This is harmful to the online edition on so many levels!
Online Elsewhere has argued before that the pandemic and forced remote instruction provided the perfect paradigm shift opportunity to move online only, but we understand why that that is a difficult concept for reporters and advisers to accept. Some have been forced to accept it, especially as strained budgets, increased printing costs, print readership declines, and the closure of local print shops have forced publications to severely cut print frequency to just once or twice a semester, if that often. It is an industry-wide problem and increasingly the answer is to switch to online only. When that happens, you are better off if you’ve already built an audience. Treating your online edition as a print morgue is not going to help. Already, most online content mirrors print content, so publications need to develop online skills to properly present that content.
JACC has already evolved its online general excellence contest guidelines to reflect the changes. The emphasis on content has been downplayed, and the presentation of content has been enhanced. Things like frequency, timeliness, multimedia, social media, photo presentation, and live links in stories are important components to online general excellence.
Pierce had the biggest problem this semester with “late” stories that languished in the online platform too long. Seventy-nine of its 142 stories (55.6 percent) arrived online three or more days after the story was in the queue. Citrus (n.31), Saddleback (n.27), and Las Positas (n.19) also had problems with “late” stories. Fifteen publications, or about a third, had at least one “late” story as measured this way. But they were not the only publications with late story problems. Just as late, in most cases, are stories dropped in batches, sometimes days or weeks after they dropped in print, but which are cut and pasted into the online platform on the same day they are posted online.
As suggested in a mid-month Online Elsewhere missive: Publications should consider adopting two policies, if they haven’t already done so:
Policy 1: No story should appear in print unless it has first appeared online, even if that is the same day. (You have to start somewhere!) The preference, of course, is that stories are introduced throughout the week rather than in batches on one or two days.
Policy 2: All writing and editing should be done in the web publication platform, or in an integrated/connected online tool such as SNO’s FLOW or Camayack, which are designed to help manage story flow. Of course, most community college publications do not produce enough content that such management systems are required. The least efficient “story management” tool is the classroom’s publicly available white board. Advice: jettison third-party word processing tools, including Google Docs, as your creation and management tools.
An important part of this policy is that writers and photographers are responsible for entering their own content into the system, including formatting. Editors, who can be given additional permissions, are responsible for editing and releasing posts. The final arbiter CAN be the editor-in-chief, but if section editors are given posting privileges the workflow is more manageable. In general, final posting, to say nothing of entering content into the system, should never be relegated to just one person, especially an adviser or other paid college employee.
Excessive gaps and excessive posts
A frequently posted online site will have few multiple-day gaps between posts, so for the purposes of this study an excessive gap is six or more days between posts. Most publications (46 of 53, 86.8 percent) had at least one excessive gap for the semester, often around Spring Break time. Excessive-gap leaders included Cypress (n.8), Pasadena (n.7), and Chaffey and Bakersfield (n.6 each). The average gap was 10.3 days, but Southwestern, Foothill, and San Diego Mesawere among those who skewed that average with gaps of 117, 42, 40 days, respectively; most of the total 139 gaps were six to eight days long.
Also to be avoided are excessive-post days, especially if you are an excessive-gap publication. (See discussion above about “late” stories and “other late” stories.) For the purposes of this study, an excessive gap was defined as a day in which six or more stories were posted; after that point most of the time it was pretty clear stories were begin posted in batches. Twenty-four, or about half, the publications had at least one excessive-post day, many of those in the closing weeks of the semester.
Cerritos had the most excessive posts with 16, followed by Pasadena (n.13), and East LA (n.12).
Periodic excessive-post days are not inherently bad in and of themselves ... if you have an occasional boost of content or a batch of content that makes sense to bundle. For instance, Cerritos tends to have excessive posts shortly after each print edition comes out because it includes posts with individual PDFs of print pages. It does so to create online portfolios for page designers. So, if it has a 12-page publication, it is likely to have a 13-post excessive-post day as it moves each of those pages and one full-issue PDF over for archival purposes. Those pages likely were all completed a day or two earlier. Story content for those pages, though, typically is posted throughout the week as it is created. The Talon Marks also had significantly more overall posts than most publications.
Other publications routinely have excessive-post days at the end of the semester as students rush to unload the stories they've been hanging onto for a chunk of the semester. This also shows up as publications move content over from magazines –a practice that could easily be corrected –or from multimedia newswriting class final projects.
The real problem with excessive post days is when they clearly are unnecessary but are routine to the publication because it treats its online publication as a second-class publication. The online publication is considered an afterthought: both the excessive gaps and the excessive posts expose the publication's inattentiveness.
Foreign language stories
An interesting sub-culture within the community college publications are those which publish stories in a foreign language. While previous semesters have included a variety of other languages, this semester they were exclusively in Spanish. And in most cases, the stories were duplicates of English versions and often appeared days or weeks AFTER the English version, sometimes announcing an event that already took place.
Publications with audiences they believe will benefit from stories in a foreign language should be encouraged to do more. The translation practice for student reporters creates marketable skills in addition to serving the publication’s readership. But something must be done about the translation delay and presentation of stories, especially when near-instant translation is available through such free online tools as Google Translate!
Publications that include foreign language stories should probably adopt the following policy guidelines:
1. Publication of both versions should be simultaneous, or near simultaneous. Certainly, translation should not follow by more than 24 hours.
2. The reader should probably be advised what language it is, especially if it is other than Spanish.
3. Struggling English readers will benefit from a link in the English version advising that there is a foreign language version available. The same holds true for the English reader who stumbles upon the foreign language version. A link back to the English version helps the reader. (In other words, link each to the other, not just the later addition to the original, though even that is important.)
4. The ultimate goal is to report some stories originally in their foreign language version (job skills!) and follow with the English version.
5. Some foreign language stories should be told with multimedia … in the foreign language. (To date, stories that contain multimedia almost exclusively use the English version on the foreign language version of the story.)
Eight publications included 84 foreign language stories this semester. Contra Costa was the clear leader with 31 of its 72 stories (43.1 percent) in Spanish. Others who posted in Spanish included Butte (9), Fresno (7), Long Beach (1), Palomar (15), San Diego City (6), Skyline (11), and Solano (4).
What they wrote about
As stories were catalogued, I noted what kinds of topics or issues students were writing about. This word cloud shows what was written about the most. The economy was important, but just about anything that involved money was included with this tag. “Mx” and “wx” were included before sports story tags to distinguish men’s and women’s sports. Music, various holidays –both formal and informal – and movies were also popular topics. “Stage” was the term used to designate campus plays and other live theatrical performances. “Fairs” was used to designate various campus gatherings in the campus quads as well as formal county fairs. “Mental” was the shortcut tag for everything from stress to mental health issues to suicide.
In-story links
In-story links are a writer's secret weapon that are unavailable in print—they add context, build trust, and inspire readers to take action. For readers, they offer instant access to sources and deeper information without disrupting the flow. For writers, they're a way to keep narratives tight and focused while putting the details just a click away. Any reference to a URL in a story should be an in-story link online, but that is just the beginning of possibilities.
Use of live in-story links was measured throughout the semester. Tool-generated links, such as bylines, were not counted, only those that obviously were manually entered were.
Links appeared in 38.4 percent of stories but easily could have been double that amount. All publications but Canyonsand Glendale had at least one story with in-story links. San Jose and Sierra, two publications with the fewest posts, had the highest percentage of stories with links with 100 percent each. Also with 100 percent, though, was Laney. San Diego City had links in 93.2 percent of its stories.
Laney led in the average number of links in its stories that had links. Its 421 stories with links averaged 11.9 links each and San Diego City was second with an 8.8 average. Sierra was third with an 8.4 average. The statewide average was 4.8 links per story that had them.
Santa Rosa held the record for a story with the most links: 78 in a story about awards won at a JACC conference. Riverside and San Diego City each had stories with 55 links; each story was about the primary election.
All Publications
In-story links were most likely to be found in news stories but were also popular in feature stories. The highest average (5.2 avg.), however, was in opinion stories. Unsurprisingly, campus stories were more likely to show up in campus-related stories. While 479 stories (9.6 percent) of stories had just one link, the largest grouping had between two and 10 links (25.3 percent).
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American River
More than half of the Current’s stories contained links. The publication averaged 5.2 links per story, with one story containing 38 links. Sports was the weakest area for links, though athlete’s names could be linked to athletic department player profiles. Opinion stories averaged the most links, as did non-campus/non-community (neither) stories.
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The Renegade Rip had just two stories with links, each of those with just one link, indicating that there is plenty of room for growth. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. For feature stories link to sources and topic information.
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Butte
The Roadrunner saw links in 40.7 percent of its stories, slightly higher than the state average, but links-per-story were lower than the state average. Links were most likely to show up in news stories, where the per-story average was strong. They were least likely to show up in sports stories, which were few in an of themselves. The publication delivers a rich fare of “neither” stories and that is where links showed up most; more than half of stories with links were “neither” stories. Shoot, more than half of all Roadrunner stories were “neither” stories. More than a third of stories with links had just one.
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Canyons
The Canyons News was one of two publications with stories but none with links, indicating that it has room for growth. This will be a bit more challenging for the publication in that so many of its stories are transcript versions of video stories, but this does not mean that reporters don’t need to be on the lookout for possibilities. Many news features that focus on community-based groups, for instance, could probably be linked to the organizations’ official websites. And when campus-related stories are run, look for opportunities to link to individuals’ websites.
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The Talon Marks had links in just 12.5 percent of its stories, about a third of the state average. In other words, there is room for growth. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. For feature stories link to sources and topic information. Feature stories got the most links, which is a good start. And while more campus stories had links that other localizations, “neither” stories had a healthy 6.6 link average.
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The Breeze had links in more than half its stories, and its 5.7-links-per-story average was strong; most of the stories with links had between two and 10 links. Feature stories and “neither” stories were most likely to have links with opinion stories likely to have the most links per story: 12.7.
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Citrus
The Clarion ran links in stories 25.8 percent of the time, well below the state averages, there is room for growth in use of links. News stories and campus stories were most likely to have links, though feature stories were likely to have three times more per story than other genres. Just one link was found in 60.1 percent of its stories with links, and many times those links were connected to one word, such as “here.” Readers can benefit from more information of what the link provides them.
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The Advocate ran links in a whopping 70.8 percent of its stories, though it must be remembered that approximately half of stories were repeated in a separate language. It averaged a healthy 6.3 links per story with links. Links were most likely to be found in news stories and campus stories, though the highest link-per-story average was with “neither’ stories, where the average was an astronomical 11.4. The publication had two stories with 36 links each.
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The Connection ran links in just 15 stories, or 21.7 percent of the time, well below the state average. There is room for growth. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. For feature stories link to sources and topic information. Feature stories and campus stories were most likely to have links.
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The Cuestonian ran links in stories about twice the state average and in nearly three of five stories. Campus stories, by far, had the most links. The weakest showings were in opinion stories and sports stories. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles.
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Cypress
The Chronicle ran links in stories just 25.0 percent of the time, well below the state average. And in most of those stories had just one link, often to a single word, such as “here;” readers can benefit from more information of what the link provides them. The publication had no opinion stories at all, so lack of links there is no surprise, but there were no links in sports stories, either. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles.
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DeAnza
As one of the state’s most complete online publications, it was no surprise to see that LaVoz ran links in nearly three of five stories (57.2 percent) and a healthy 7.5 average in those stories. News stories and campus stories, unsurprisingly, were most favored to have links, and plenty of them. Opinion stories were surpassed in average number of links only by “neither” stories that provide lots of external link opportunities. LaVoz had the third most stories (following El Camino and San Diego City) with links with 111 stories.
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Desert
The Chapparal had links in half its stories for the semester, averaging 3.3 each. In fact, while it links often, the publication rarely has more than one link; one-third of them had only one link. The publication does not run many sports stories, so it was unsurprising to see only one sports story with links. News and feature stories and campus stories tend to see links more than anything else.
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Diablo Valley
The Inquirer nearly matched the state average with in-story links at 34.8 percent. Its 3.9 average links per story was less than the state average, however. News stories were most likely to have links, along with a healthy per-story average, but the average with feature stories was just a bit higher. Campus stories were most likely to have links. Half the stories with links had just one link.
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East LA
The Campus News is one of the publications in the state know for its batch uploading after a week or so of no stories, so it is not surprising that few of its stories, just 4.6 percent of them, had links. And more than half the time if there was a link there was just one. URLs in stories rarely are connected. No links appeared in opinion or sports stories and just one in a feature story. There is room for growth. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. For feature stories link to sources and topic information. Campus stories were more likely to have links in them.
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El Camino
As one of the state’s most complete online publications it was not surprising to see that links showed up in three-quarters of the Union’s stories, each averaging a healthy 5.1. The Union is strong in campus stories (more than 80 percent), so it also was not surprising to see that more than more than half of stories with links were campus stories. It is also strong in news stories with links. The highest average, however, was in sports stories where the publication has mastered the art of linking to athletic department athlete profiles in stories.
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The Script does not publish often, but nearly half its stories (41.9 percent) have links in them, usually multiple links. Campus stories and news and feature stories are most likely to have links. There were no sports stories with links, but the publication had few sports stories at all.
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Fresno
The RamPage included links in stories in nearly two-thirds (66.7 percent) of its stories and showed a good spread of genres with links as well as localizations. While its weakest category for links was community-based stories the publication included an impressive 6.5 per story average for the community stories that did have links. All per-story averages were strong but note the fabulous 8.7 average for opinion stories. Twenty of its 74 stories with link had just one link, which makes the averages even more impressive.
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Fullerton
The Hornet had links in stories just slightly higher than the state average but had a strong 5.1 per-story average overall. News stories were more likely to have links and both campus stories and “neither” stories also contained links often. A quarter of stories with links had just one link. Sports and community-based stories were the weakest categories. For sports, consider linking to athletic department athlete profiles. And considering that many of the Hornet’s community-based stories focus involve local businesses, consider linking to business websites.
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Glendale
El Vaquero was one of two publications in the state with no stories with links. There is plenty of room for growth. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. For feature stories link to sources and topic information.
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Grossmont
The Summit ran links in only 8.9 percent of its stories and when it did it averaged only 2.8 links. Ther is plenty of room for growth. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and The Star official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. For feature stories link to sources and topic information. With campus club feature stories look to see if the club has an official link; if clubs do not have official websites, consider creating some on the publication website with general information.
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LA Valley
The Star included links only 25.5 percent of the time, well below the state average. News stories and campus-focused stories tended to have links more often. There were few opinion kinks and no sports links. For opinion stories link to online sources and The Star official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles.
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Laney
The Peralta Citizen was one of three publications with links in 100 percent of its stories. It also had one of the highest-per-story averages with 11.9 per story. Since most of the publication’s stories are news stories that cover or are related to the college’s board of trustees, it is no surprise that links show up in campus news stories.
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Las Positas
The Express had links in 71.9 percent of its stories, about double the state rate. But 34 of its 41 stories with links had just one link and they almost always were reporter contact information with a live email or social media link manually added, not exactly what we’ve been suggesting. Still, it also had 14 stories with 11-20 links and the overall average for stories with links was 5.2. News and sports and campus stories had the most links.
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Long Beach
The Viking included links less than a quarter of the time, well below the state average. The average links per story was below state averages, too. Just under half of stories with links had just one link. Campus stories and news stories tended to have the most links, but the highest averages were with opinion stories and “neither” stories.
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Los Medanos
The Experience ran links in just 6.7 percent of its stories, so there is obvious room for growth. More than half of the few stories with links had just one. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. For feature stories link to sources and topic information.
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Mt. San Antonio
SacMedia ran links in a mind-blowing 86.9 percent of the time, more than double the state average. Also mind-blowing was the 8.6 links per sports story that had links. Most stories with links had multiple links, usually between two and 10. All genres and all localizations had links, though community-based stories had them less often than others.
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Mt. San Jacinto
The Talon ran links in 38.5 percent of stories, about the state average, but it averaged only 2.6 links in those stories; about a third had just one link. Feature stories and “neither” stories were most likely to have links. No sports stories had links; consider linking to athletic department athlete profiles.
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Orange Coast
The Coast Report had links in 40.6 percent of its stories, slightly above the state average. But when you look at the spread of link usage the publication shows few weaknesses. There were few community stories with links, for instance, but the 5.8 average for those stories is strong. The Coast Report should keep up the good work and look for more possibilities in other stories to build its usage.
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Palomar
The Telescope ran links in 56,9 percent of its stories, well above the state average. The weakest area was with opinion stories, though feature stories could use links more often, too. The vast majority of stories with links had multiple links. News stories and campus stories were most likely to have links.
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Pasadena
The Courier had links in 45.3 percent of its stories, slightly above the state average, but has content that could easily handle more links; a quarter of its stories with links had just one. News stories and campus stories were most likely to have links, though “neither” stories were also well represented.
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Pierce
Despite the fact that the Roundup takes extra time to edit and post its stories online one would think that more than 27.5 percent of its stories would have links, but only opinion stories showed a strong commitment to links: 31 of 37 stories (83.7 percent) with links were opinion stories, virtually all of which were media-style links. Campus stories edged out “neither” stories (in the Roundup’s case most likely one of its opinion stories, where, again, averages are high) for stories with links.
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Rio Hondo
El Paisano pretty much splits its stories evenly among campus, community, and “neither“ focus, so one would look to see if link usage is spread out. It is not. No campus stories, for instance, had links. News stories and community stories showed the strongest link usage, but the publication really just had few stories with links, just 15.8 percent. There is room for growth and the logical first place to look is with campus-based stories. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. For feature stories link to sources and topic information.
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Riverside
The Viewpoints ran links in 57.3 percent of its stories, well above state averages. Nearly a quarter of stories with links had just one. News stories and campus stories were most likely to have links, but the publication also does a good job covering community-based stories and the average number of links in those stories that have links is a whopping 7.2. Feature stories fare even better with an 8.7 average.
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Sacramento
The Express ran stories with links only 29.5 percent of the time, well below the state average. Feature stories and campus stories were most likely to have links. There were no sports stories with links, despite reasonably robust sports coverage. There is room for growth. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles.
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Saddleback
The Lariat ran stories with links only 30.0 percent of the tie, below the state average. News and feature stories did okay, as did campus stories, but given the high percentage of Lariat stories that are “neither” based, one would expect more link stories in that category. There is room for growth. The publication does not run many opinion stories but could consider running links in the ones that they do. It might also consider linking to athletic department player profiles in sport stories.
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San Diego City
If any publication could be crowned as the leader in use of links it would be the City Times, which includes links in a jaw-dropping 93.2 percent of the time. Also jaw dropping is the publication’s 8.8 links per story average for stories with links. Most of the stories with links are news stories and campus stories. “Neither” stories had an unbelievable 24.2 links per story, but many of the stories these included were extensive gubernatorial candidate profiles that were quite in-depth. Even feature stories (again including the candidate profiles) had a high average of 12.4 links.
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San Diego Mesa
The Mesa Press ran links just 14.1 percent of the stories, well below the state average, indicating that there is room for growth. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. Half the few stories with links had just one, so look for more opportunities.
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San Francisco
The Guardsman ran links in just a quarter of its stories (24.0 percent), well below the state average. And most often when it does include a link in the story, there is just one. News stories and campus stories were most likely to include links, but the publication runs several important and interesting community stories and should look for more opportunities in those stories. For sports stories, the weakest category above, consider linking to athlete profiles on the college’s athletics website.
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San Joaquin Delta
The Collegian ran links in stories only 28.1 percent of the time, well below the state average. When it did run links a third of the time there was just one link. There is room for growth. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. News stories and campus stories were most likely to have links, but the 6.5 average for opinion stories was impressive. Links in “neither” stories were also strong.
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San Jose
The City Times had a weak semester all around, mustering only three stories for the semester. Still, it managed to have links in 100 percent of its stories. Once the publication ramps up again it should consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that it is covering in its news stories. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles.
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Santa Ana
El Don ran links in just 12.7 percent of its stories, well below the state average. Campus stories were the most likely to have links, but the publication also runs a fair number of community-based stories that could include more links. There is room for growth all around. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles.
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Santa Barbara
The Channels ran links in an impressive four out of five stories (80.2 percent) with a 4.7 links-per-story average. Community and “neither” stories had impressive averages of 6-plus links per story. There are few weaknesses as the publication shows strengths in nearly every category.
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Santa Monica
The Corsair ran links in 42.9 percent of stories, higher than the state average, though its links-per-story was lower than state average. Almost all stories with links were campus news stories, which indicates that there is room for growth in opinion, sports, and feature stories. The publication had so few “neither” stories that the fact none had links is not concerning. The same holds true for opinion stories. The highest links-per-story average was with community stories. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles.
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Santa Rosa
The Oak Leaf had the distinction of the running the story with the most links for the semester: 78. While that is a lot, it was a story about awards won at the JACC/ACP conference and each was appropriate. But it ran links only 31.8 percent of the time, just under the state average. Just short of a third of stories with links had just one. News stories and campus stories were most likely to have links, and most categories had decent links-per-story averages. The weakest categories for links were opinion stories and sports stories.
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Sequoias
The Campus Journal ran links just 14.3 percent of the time, well below the state average. The links-per-story average was an anemic 1.8 as nearly all stories with links had just one connected with a single word, such as “here” or “website; readers will benefit from more information on what’s behind the link. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles.
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Sierra
The Roundhouse published just 11 stories for the semester and all 11 had links … with an impressive 8.4 links average. Most stories were feature stories, so that was the leading category for links. Campus stories were most likely to have links, but community story links were also impressive.
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Skyline
News stories were most likely to have links in Skyline View stories, though the links-per-story average for opinion stories was strong, too. Suffering were sports stories and feature stories. Links appeared in just 15.8 percent of stories and half of those had just one link, so there is room for growth all around. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. For feature stories link to sources and topic information.
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Solano
The Pulse had links in only 26.5 percent of its stories, well below the state average. The links-per-story average was also low as a third of stories with links had just one. News stories and campus stories were most likely to have links. There is room for growth with opinion, sports and feature stories. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles.For feature stories link to sources and topic information.
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Southwestern
The Sun struggles just with getting stories online, but there are signs that is changing. Because stories got ported online from print in batches, little effort went into adding links. Just two stories (4.7 percent) had links, indicating massive room for growth. With news stories consider linking to websites of campus and community groups that you are covering. For opinion stories link to online sources and official websites for movies/tv shows/music albums, etc. that you review. For sports consider linking to athletic department player profiles. For feature stories link to sources and topic information. But first the publication needs to work at getting stories online in a timely fashion.
Sources
Sources supply the essential facts, context, and evidence that anchor a news story, turning hearsay into verified information. They are a cornerstone of journalistic integrity and matter. One of the hardest jobs teaching young, beginning journalists is to help them become comfortable talking to sources and accurately quoting and paraphrasing them.
Sources for all stories were tracked throughout the semester, counting not only which stories had them but also how many per story and what kinds of sources. The sources were counted only the first time they were used in a story, whether they were direct or indirect. Summarizing what sources say is an important journalistic skill. Merely mentioning a potential source did not count; saying someone talked is a fact, not a source; a quote of some kind had to be attributed to the source.
Community college publications had nearly 12,000 sources (n.11,901) over the course of the semester. Long Beach had the most total sources with 738, but the state median was 181. Sacramento had the highest average per story with sources with 5.9 average. San Jose, again with just three stories, was second with a 4.7 average. And Laney was third with a 4.4 average. The state average was 3.2 sources per story for stories with sources (stories without sources were not included in these averages).
Sources appeared in 75.0 percent of all stories statewide. Three publications — Canyons, San Jose, and Sierra— had sources in 100 percent of their stories.
Sources were divided into five groups: Administration, Campus Employees, Students, Other Campus and Community, and Media/Web.
Administration
These included top-level management through vice president and college board trustees. (Directors, deans, and other mid-management employees were considered in the next group.) To be counted the source had to be quoted from interview or from a meeting/event. If the quote came from a campus-wide e-mail it was included in the Media/Web group, but if the email was identified as directly to the publication it was counted here.
This limited the potential population of sources to one or two dozen per campus. This is concerning given the apparent trend of administrators avoiding talking to student reporters; many quotes were from administrators speaking at campus governance meetings or campus events. Another growing trend is for campuses to adopt “speak to Public Relations” policies in an effort to control the campus narrative by filtering all communications through one spokesperson, robbing student reporters of opportunities to learn from various sources.
Laney quoted administrative sources more than anyone else. Many of these were from quoting sources as they spoke at campus governance meetings but also included several times the college president emailed the publication directly It quoted 23 administrative sources over the semester and average 0.6 administrative sources per story with sources. San Jose and Southwestern followed with 0.3 sources average. Five publications averaged 0.2 administrative sources per story with sources.
Campus Employees
Campus employees included certificated employees (mid-level managers and teachers), classified employees (secretaries, janitors, etc.), and some student employees.
Long Beach quoted employees more than other publications with 173 employee interactions, followed by El Camino with 114, DeAnza with 110, and Santa Rosa with 109.
El Camino had the highest average per story with 1.1. Cosumnes River, Palomar, Santa Ana, San Jose, and Santa Barbara each averaged 1.0.
Students
Only current students were counted as students in this study; alumni were counted in the next group. Students made up the largest population of sources with a total of 3,904, or 1.1 per story. These included roving reporter features, which often included five to seven students. The highest number of sources in a single story was 23 (Mt. San Antonio).
Long Beach quoted students more than anyone else with 293 student sources over the semester. Runnersup were DeAnza with 242 and Orange Coast with 198.
Grossmont had the highest student source average with 4.0 students per story with sources. From there the averages plummeted; Sequoias was second with 0.8 students per story with sources.
Non-Campus
These sources included other non-campus and community sources that the student reporters likely interviewed or quoted from a live meeting/event, including alumni, campus guest speakers, community sources, and former employees. If it appeared to be a source the reporter likely did not observe directly the source was included in the last group.
Long Beach again led the effort with 180 non-campus sources, followed by Santa Rosa with 133 and DeAnza128.
Sierra had the highest average with 1.5 non-campus sources per story with sources. Canyons and Contra Costafollowed with 1.1 each.
Media/web sources
Finally, this group included remaining sources and included quotes from other media or web sources, whether linked or not (see a different area of this report). It included sources that appear to not have been present in person at a reporter-covered event/meeting.
Pierce, with its media-laden pro-con opinion pieces, led with 187 media sources, followed by San Diego City(n.162), San Joaquin Delta (n.137), and El Camino with 133.
Laney led in media/web sources per story with sources with a 1.7 average, followed by San Diego City with 1.6, Pierce 1.5, and American River with 1.3.
Media sources factored in heavily with most publications. One of the concerns is that student reporters do not have the opportunity to question sources or practice summarizing what they said; instead, they rely on what other reporters summarized.
While most publications follow standard journalistic practice of identifying the source with a full name and some kind of identification on first reference, that is not always the case. In today’s political environment some publications are including only first names rather than full names, sometimes without obvious reasons. Campus identification styles are all over the map, more so this semester than in previous semester of the project
One COULD identify every student quoted in a story as "a student of Xyz College." But that doesn't tell us much because there are thousands of other people on campus who could have the same title, and at a large enough college or university there could be more than one person with the same name and identification. So, many publications default to identifying students by their majors. Sometimes even that is not enough. (What good does it do me to know that the winning pitcher on a baseball team is a biology major?) Some publications identify athletes by their jersey number, but that really does not help the reader evaluate the weight of what is being said.
And what do you do with sources that have multiple identifications, such as "campus janitor" and "local chapter union president?" There, of course, the writer should choose the identification that is most relevant to the story. But that is not what you see in a lot of community college publications, probably because the student reporter is still learning the craft.
Earlier this semester Online Elsewhere proposed the following guidelines for campus identifications, though ultimately each publication must adopt its own styles. Consistency is key.
- Board of trustees members - board member (or title on the board, such as board president)
- Administrators - administrative title (include use of Dr., when appropriate)
- Deans and supervisors - title (including discipline where appropriate, include Dr. when appropriate)
- Faculty - discipline instructor or discipline department chair (include Dr. where appropriate, but know that not all faculty have doctorates)
- Coaches - title (sport probably not necessary as the story probably already identified it by the time the coach is included)
- Committee members - committee titles where appropriate (such as senate president or curriculum chair)
- Classified staff - title (including discipline assignment where appropriate, but avoid position classification, such as Administration Assistant III)
- General students - discipline major (as opposed to freshman/sophomore/junior/senior, unless relevant)
- Student government - ASB/SGA/etc. title (the fact that it is a student government title is important because some student governments use position titles that can be confused with administrative titles; do not use major or freshman/sophomore unless relevant)
- Athletes - position (not by uniform number, except in cutlines where the number helps identify which athlete; don't use major or freshman/sophomore unless relevant)
- Actors in plays - role (do not use major or freshman/sophomore, unless relevant)
- Club members - titles when appropriate, such as poetry club president (don't use major or freshman/sophomore unless relevant)
- Student employees - include "student" with job title/role (readers need that information)
As part of the editing process, editors should mentally note the first reference to make sure the source is properly identified by both full name and identification. This is especially important if paragraphs are moved or deleted. If the full name is not used, explain to the reader why the full name was not used. Standard journalistic style on second/subsequent reference is last name (not first) only for all, though some stories require exceptions, such as two sources with the same last name.
The chart at the top of this section shows how each publication handled sources, again including only stories WITH sources. While the average among all stories is important, this study focused primarily on HOW sources were used more than how often they were NOT.
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Here are summaries for each publication:
American River – The Current averaged 3.1 sources per story that had sources, just over the state average. There were sources in 66.3 percent of all stories, below state average. Media sources (n. 85, avg. 1.4) were used most, followed by student sources and employee sources.
Bakersfield – The Rip used sources in only 47.2 percent of stories (lowest in the state) and averaged just 2.3 sources per story, both well below state averages. Media sources were used most (n.68, avg. 0.2), followed by student sources.
Butte – The Roadrunner included sources in just 53.7 percent of its stories, a situation that is not uncommon when a publication has a high number of non-campus/non-community stories. In those cases, one expects to see media type sources and that was the case here with media source in more stories than all other types combined (n.64 compared to n.40). There was an average of just 1.8 sources per story that had sources. Its three campus employee sources tied with two other publications for second fewest in the state. The publication’s reporters also need to work at leaving themselves out of stories when introducing sources (“I met with…”)
Canyons – The Canyons News was one of just three publications with sources in 100 percent of its stories as it followed a consistent broadcasting reporting style in most its stories. Many of its stories are community based, so it is no surprise that non-campus sources were next most used (n. 70, avg. 1.2).
Cerritos – The Talon Marks used sources in just more than half its stories (54.0 percent) and averaged just 2.4 sources per story with sources; both numbers well below state average. Student sources were the most used (n.123), followed by media sources (n.83) and non-campus sources (n.77).
Chaffey – The Breeze included sources in 70.2 percent of its stories, just under the state average, but its 1.9 sources per story was well under state averages. Hurting its chances a bit was the number of multimedia stories that were one-on-one interviews. It was one of four publications with no administrative sources. Media sources were used most often (n. 32, avg. 0.8). Student sources were second.
Citrus – The Clarion used sources in just 53.9 percent of its stories and was one of four publications in the state with no administrative sources. It averaged 2.6 sources per story with sources. When it used sources, it was most likely to use student sources (n.66). Employee sources were second most used (n.35).
Contra Costa – The Advocate used sources in 94.4 percent of its stories and averaged 3.3 sources per story. This is impressive, but one must keep in mind that almost half of the publication’s stories were duplicates in a second language. Non-campus sources were used most often (n.77, avg. 1.1), followed by media sources (n.68, avg. 1.0). Student sources were a distant third.
Cosumnes River – The Connection included sources in a healthy 85.5 percent of the time and average 3.9 sources per story, well above state average. Students were far and away the most dominant sources (n.127), followed by employee sources (n.57).
Cuesta – The Cuestonian included sources in stories just 58.8 percent of its stories with sources and averaged just 2.5 sources each time, both below state average. Campus employees were its preferred source pool and they were used 64 times (avg. 0.7). Actually, except for administrative sources (n.4) the use of sources overall was well spread among the different categories.
Cypress – The Chronicle average just 1.7 sources per story with sources (the lowest average in the state) but included them in a state-average 75.0 percent of its stories. In other words, it is not a problem of using sources, but more an issue with the number of sources. The publication was one of four publications without any administrative sources. It overwhelmingly preferred employee sources (n.21); second were media sources (n.12). It tied for fewest number of student sources across the state with just six.
DeAnza – La Voz was a source juggernaut, with sources in 76.3 percent of its stories (avg. 3.8, third highest in the state). It favored student sources (n.242), largely because of its regular roving reporter features, but also looked to employee sources often (n.110, third most). Non-campus sources (n.128) accounted for the second most.
Desert – The Chaparral included sources 72.4 percent of the time, just below the state average, and averaged 3.0 per story, matching that state average. The publication runs a lot of community-based stories, so it is no surprise that non-campus sources were among the most used (n.42), but that was equal to student sources.
Diablo Valley – The Inquirer included sources in a whopping 86.8 percent (above state average) of its stories and averaged 3.0 sources per story (state average). Non-campus sources were used most often (n.48, avg. 1.0), followed by student sources (n.35, avg. 0.3).
East LA – The Campus News ran sources in just 59.9 percent of its stories and averaged 2.1 per story. Both are below state average. A high percentage of reviews with no sources was a major contributor. Student sources were favored (n.68), followed by campus employees (n.58).
El Camino – The Union ran sources in 84.3 percent of its stories, favoring student sources (n.186, avg. 1.1) and employee sources (n.169) as it put a heavy emphasis on campus news. It averaged a healthy 3.9 sources per story, tied for highest average in the state.
Foothill – The Script included sources in 87.1 percent of its stories, well above state average, but only 2.5 sources per story (below state average), indicating that it might want to include more sources per story. Student sources led (n.30) with non-campus and employee sources jockeying for second most (n.15 and 14).
Fresno – The RamPage ran sources in 73.0 percent of its stories (just under the state average) and averaged 3.1 sources among stories with sources (just over the state average). It favored student sources (n.110) by more than two-to-one than other types of sources. Other categories, except administration, were used in balanced proportions.
Fullerton – The Hornet ran sources in 84.4 percent of its stories, well above state average, and averaged 2.7 per story, below state average. Student sources were used most often (n.95) and were fueled by its sports stories where athletes are often used as sources, but media sources (n.82) were also heavily used.
Glendale – El Vaquereo had sources in 72.2 percent of its stories (just under the state average) and an anemic 1.8 average sources per story (tied for third lowest). It was one of four publications with no administrative sources. When it did include sources, it was most likely to be a student source, since student sources outnumber all other sources 15-9.
Grossmont – The Summit had sources in 76.8 percent of its stories, just over the state average, but its 2.6 sources-per-story average was below the state average. Student sources (n.40) just edged out employee sources (n.37) for the most used sources.
LA Valley – The Valley Star included sources in a whopping 86.4 percent of its stories, but average only 2.2 per story, fewer than the state average. It favored student sources (n.38, avg. 0.4) over media sources (n.24, avg. 0.6).
Laney – The Peralta Citizen included sources in 86.4 percent of its stories, well above the state average and average 4.4 sources per story with sources, by far the highest average in the state. Because of its heavy focus on covering the college district’s board of trustees, it had more administrative sources (n.23) than any other publication in the state. But its most frequent source was a media source (n.65, avg. 1.7).
Las Positas – The Express included sources in 86.4 percent of its stories (well above state average) but averaged a mere 2.5 sources per story with sources (below state average). Student sources (n.75) were most popular, followed by campus employees (n.54).
Long Beach – The Viking News included sources in a mind-blowing 94.9 percent of stories and exceeded the state average for sources per story (avg. 3.3) for stories with sources. While its 293 student sources (avg. 0.4) were the most in the state, the publication also regularly included non-campus sources (n.180) and campus employee sources (n.173). Its total 738 sources were the most in the state by at least 150.
Los Medanos – The Experience included sources in 71.9 percent of its stories, just below the state average and averaged 3.1 sources per story with sources, slightly above the state average. Student sources (n.118) were most popular, followed by campus employees (n.92).
Mt. San Antonio – SacMedia had sources in nearly two-thirds of its stories (65.7 percent), but the state average is 75.0 percent. But it averaged a state-leading 3.9 sources per story that used sources. Student sources (n.78) edged out media sources (n.73) for most common. Its 15 administrative sources were third most in the state.
Mt. San Jacinto – The Talon had sources in 64.1 percent of stories, which is below the state average and its 2.1 sources per story average was well below the state average. Media sources (n.33) were, by far, were the most common sources, more than double all other sources combined. The publication’s three campus employee sources tied with two other publications for second fewest in the state.
Orange Coast – The Coast Report included sources in a whopping 83.0 percent of stories, but averaged only 2.7 sources per story, below the state average. The publication’s 203 student sources were the most in the state, followed by campus employees (n.97).
Palomar – The Telescope used sources in 70.0 percent of its stories (below the state average) but averaged 3.3 sources per story with sources (above the state average). Student sources (n.115) were most popular, followed by campus employee sources (n.90).
Pasadena – The Courier used sources in 74.0 percent of its stories (just below the state average) but averaged 30.0 sources per story that had them, which is right at the state average. Student sources (n.168) were most common but except for administrative sources all categories were well represented.
Pierce – The Roundup used sources in 85.2 percent of its stories and largely due to its heavy use of media sources in opinion stories averaged 4.0 sources per story with sources, well above the state average and fourth highest average overall. Media sources, again largely due to opinion stories were used most often (n.187, avg. 1.5), followed by student sources (n.111).
Rio Hondo – El Paisano was one of four publications in the state with no administrative sources. It used sources in just 59.6 percent of its stories, well below the state average. Its 1.9 sources per story was among the lowest in the state. Non-campus sources (n.102) were used most often. Media sources (n.16) edged out student sources (n.15) for second most used.
Riverside – The Viewpoints included sources in 79.3 percent of its stories, just above the state average, and averaged 2.9 sources in each of those stories, just below the state average. Non-campus sources (n.102) were used most often, but the publication’s use of 86 student sources, 71 campus employee sources and 72 media sources reflect its balance of campus and community stories.
Sacramento – The Express used sources in just 63.6 percent of its stories but used a lot of sources when it did use them and averaged 5.9, the highest average in the state. Student sources (n.20) were used most often, followed by campus employees (n.18).
Saddleback – The Lariat included sources in 71.4 percent of its stories (below the state average) and averaged 3.6 when it did use them, above the state average. Student sources overwhelmingly were the most used as the 105 student sources were more than all other groups combined.
San Diego City – The City Times included stories in 78.2 percent of its stories and averaged 3.4 sources per story that had sources. Both numbers are above the state average. Boosted by extensive election coverage that included deep candidate profiles, media sources (n.162, avg. 1.6) were used most often, followed by student sources (n.121) and non-campus sources (n.93).
San Diego Mesa – The Mesa Press included sources in just 59.4 percent of its stories and averaged just 1.7 sources per story, both well below the state average. When sources were used it was usually student sources (n.25). Campus employees (n.15) edged out non-campus sources (n.14) for second place.
San Francisco – The Guardsman performed above state average in including sources in 82.4 percent of its stories with a 3.2 source-per-story average. With 15 administrative sources (fourth most in the state) the publication spread its source use around the five categories. Student sources (n.139) were most used, though.
San Joaquin Delta – The Collegian used sources in a healthy 88.3 percent of its stories and averaged 3.3 per story with sources, both above the state average. Media sources (n.137) were used most often. Campus employees (n.94) beat out students (n.77) as second most used.
San Jose – With just three stories it is difficult to distinguish any patterns for the Times, but the publication was one of just three with sources in 100 percent of its stories. Students (n.6) were the most used.
Santa Ana – El Don included sources in 73.0 percent of its stories (just below the state average) and average 3.5 sources (slightly higher than the state average). Student sources (n.69) prevailed, followed by campus employees.
Santa Barbara – If one charts source use for the Channels from left to right in the chart above you practically get a bell curve with student sources (n.98) leading. Because of the publication’s heavy coverage of campus governance meetings, it is not a surprise to see strong use of campus employee sources (n.96) and even administrative sources (n.12) to balance non-campus and media sources. The publication used sources in 78.6 percent of its stories and averaged 2.9 sources (just under the state average).
Santa Monica – The Corsair used sources in 78.6 percent of its stories (better than the state average) and averaged 3.5 sources per story (also better than the state average. Because of the publication’s heavy use of non-campus stories, it is not surprising to see student source use (n.88) barely beat out non-campus sources (n.82). Even use of administrative sources was strong. The publication could use more sources with sports stories, though.
Santa Rosa – The Oak Leaf used the fourth most sources in the state: 283. It used them in 78.1 percent of its stories and averaged 3.5 per story, both comfortably above the state average. Student sources (n.198) nearly doubled non-campus sources (n.133) and campus employee sources (n.109). Even use of administrative sources was decent.
Sequoias – The Campus Journal used sources in fewer than half its stories (47.5 percent) second lowest in the state. But the real concern is that it abandoned traditional methods of identifying sources, often just using first names, especially for student sources with no other identification beyond identifying them as student sources (see the suggested guidelines above). It was the only publication with no non-campus sources.
Sierra – The Roundhouse published 11 stories near the end of the semester and was one of only three publications in the state with sources in 100 percent of its stories. But it was also one of only four publications with no administrative stories, probably due to its high content of feature stories over news stories. Non-campus sources (n.17) were used more than any campus sources; in fact, even media sources (n.12) exceeded any campus sources.
Skyline – The Skyline View included sources in just 57.0 percent of its stories and averaged just 2.7 sources per story when it did; both numbers are below the state average. Student sources (n.121) eclipsed all other sources combined.
Solano – The Pulse used sources in just 64.7 percent of its stories and averaged just 2.2 sources per story when it did, both numbers are well below the state average. Campus employee sources (n.25) edged out student sources (n.22) and non-campus sources (n.20).
Southwestern – The Sun used sources in a healthy 88.4 percent of its stories (well above the state average) and averaged 3.1 sources (just above the state average) when it did. Student sources (n.33) just barely edged out campus employee sources (n.32). Use of administrative sources (n.12) was also healthy.
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