The Society for Collegiate Journalists at SCAD

I have a confession. I didn’t own an AP Stylebook until today.

The AP released an AP Stylebook app for the iPhone this morning with a basic set of features that will make it a must for the mobile journalist of our time.

The app itself is broken into easily accessible categories like all, main, business, sports and punctuation. Each of these are searchable, a history is created of the items you view, you can mark items as a favorite, and you can add notes to each item. Custom entries can also be created that’ll allow you to keep your organizations own style guides with you all the time.

The only setting available now is the ability to change the font size.

The app costs $28.99, more than the print or Web editions, but it’s more portable and easier to use so I think it’s worth it. If you buy the 2009 edition they’re giving you the 2010 edition for free.

Nielsen Online published the top 30 newspaper Web sites for the month of August, and they’re compared to the previous two months here. I’ve pasted them below.

It’s interesting to read the data to see which sites do best. The New York Times, which has made great strides to succeed in the online space, is in first. It dropped in the month of July, but otherwise remained fairly consistent at a little over 17 million.

Nicholas Carlson, in a blog post on The Business Insider Web site, said that it would be cheaper for the Times to send each subscriber a Kindle and have them read the news that way. The Times apparently spends more than $644 million to print and distribute the paper each year. He ends his post by saying, “What we’re trying to say is that as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn’t just expensive and inefficient; it’s laughably so.”

The Times seems to agree. They’ve begun polling print subscribers to see how much they’d be willing to pay for a subscription to their online product. Five dollars per month seems to be the consensus.

I’d pay that to read the Times each month, especially considering they provide more on the Web than they do in the printed product, and especially considering I pay 15 a month for the Times Reader software.

If they charged $5 per month to their 17 million online readers, and assuming they all stayed, they’d make $85 million a month, or just over one billion dollars a year. Given the Times Company’s financial woes we should not be surprised when the Times stops printing in the next few years.

Indeed, in Feb. 2007 the publisher of the Times said, “I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either. The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we’re leading there.”

It should be noted that when the publisher said that in 2007 they had 1.5 million visits per month.

The numbers below are in millions of unique visitors.

• Website — August — July — June
• NYTimes.com — 17.1 — 14.2 — 17.4
• washingtonopost — 11.6 — 11.5 — 9.5
• WSJ.com — 10.8 — 8.3 — 7.4
• USAToday.com — 9.7 — 9.7 — 9.5
• LA Times — 9.2 — 8.9 — 10.2
• Daily News Online — 8.5 — 9.1 — 6.9
• Boston.com — 4.9 — 5.2 — 4.0
• New York Post — 4.8 — 6.5 — 3.8
• SFGate/San Francisco Chronicle — 4.2 — 5..0 — 4.3
• Chicago Tribune — 3.9 — 4.4 — 4.3
• Politico — 3.2 — 3.4 — 2.6
• NJ.com — 2.8 — 2.9 — 3.1
• Houston Chronicle — 2.8 — 2.5 — 2.0
• Chicago Sun-Times — 2.6 — 2.4 — 2.8
• MercuryNews.com — 2.5 — 1.8 — 2.0
• Newsday — 2.5 — 2.4 — 2.8
• MiamiHerald.com — 2.5 — 1.8 — 1.9
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — 2.4 — 2.7 — 2.3
• DallasNews.com — The Dallas Morning News — 2.3 — 1.8 — 2.1
• Philly.com — 2.3 — 2.5 — 1.9
• Orlando Sentinel — 2.1 — 2.0 — 1.7
• Detroit Free Press — 2.0 — 1.6 — 1.8
• The Washington Times — 2.0 — 1.8 — 1.9
• tampabay.com — 1.9 — 1.7 — 1.9
• Star Tribune — 1.9 — 1.6 — 1.8
• DenverPost.com — 1.9 — NA — NA
• The News & Observer — 1.8 — NA — NA
• Azcentral.com — 1.8 — 1.9 — 1.8
• Sun-Sentinel — 1.7 — NA — 1.5
• KansasCity.com — 1.7 — 1.7 — 1.7

Yesterday District celebrated its staff adviser’s birthday. My girlfriend and I made the cake pictured below. In keeping with the spirit of AP Style, simplifying where possible, the cake is vanilla with vanilla frosting.

There still exists, despite furvent efforts to oppose it, a theory in some small parts of the world that journalism on the Web isn’t journalism. The propogists of this idea use guilt by association to say that because the Internet can be used for a myriad of less than professional things, it somehow dillutes journalism. Plus their dad did it with paper, and his father before him, and his before that.

This idea is false. Journalism is storytelling, not the transcription of events on paper. Good journalists should be able to tell a story with whatever medium is presented to them.

The Web, as should now be obvious to all, is the evolutionary next step in the way we communicate. Over the next 30 years, Gannett Publishing believes the younger generation will wipe out newspapers altogether. They further believe that mobile devices, like iPhones and Blackberries, will be where the younger generation gets their information.

SCAD’s news organizations, District, Connector, SCAD Radio and SCAD-Atlanta Radio have taken this idea to heart. District and Connector both publish exclusively on the Web, and are training their respective staff to produce content with audio, video, and the written word. SCAD has inadvertently created the journalism school of the future, by requiring their writing students to take computer art classes. Knowledge of Final Cut, Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator will be among the basic skill set required of anyone entering the field of journalism.

All of the new members of the SCAD SCJ Chapter have received this type of training, as will all future members.

This past May, 12 new members were inducted into the Society for Collegiate Journalists at SCAD and SCAD-Atlanta. In Savannah they are Rhys E. Finch, Tiffany N. Cullen, Caila D. Brown, Alan E. Vance, Deanne Revel, Joe S. Molinelli, Stephanie M. Bercht, Ben R. Wright, and Katelan A. Cunningham. In Atlanta they are Luiz Carlos Teixeira Coelho Filho, Naijia J. Huang, and Saria M. Canady.

Fourteen new SCJ members were inducted in a ceremony held in Keys Hall on May 18, 2008. New inductees are James Biscardi, Chase Chauffe, Elizabeth Dixon, Myrriah Gossett, Mallory Hodgkin, Michael Jewell, Lindsay Johnston, Dan Morris, Victoria Phetmisy, Stephanie Saunders, Randall Smith, Tandy Versyp, Travis Walters and Evan Watkins. Above, Michael Jewell signs the membership scroll.

SCAD-Atlanta Student Media held its first SCJ initiation ceremony May 16. Pictured in the back row (left to right) are Al Moses, Victoria Taylor, Mark Ziemer, Matt Braddick, Maken Imcha, Leslie Stanbury and Brian Steel. In the front row are Caitlin Bates, Gray Chapman, Rachel Chaikof and Turia S. Williams (adviser).

Robert Timby, president of the SCJ chapter at SCAD, received the Student Media Leader of the Year Award at the annual student leadership awards banquet on May 8. Timby has served as a DJ and music director at SCAD Radio and a staff writer at District. Pictured above (L-R) are District Editor in Chief Brian Smith, Timby, SCAD Radio General Manager Rhys Finch and Assistant Director of Student Media Jessica Clary.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Emily Gourgues
Media Relations Manager
SCAD-Atlanta
404.253.2759
egourgue@scad.edu

May 1, 2008
SCAD-Atlanta alumnae lands job at Vanity Fair

ATLANTA –Savannah College of Art and Design-Atlanta alumnae Feifei Sun was recently named editorial assistant at Vanity Fair Magazine. Sun graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree in advertising design winter quarter of 2008.

Sun was the editor-in-chief of the SCAD-Savannah student newspaper, The District, from 2006-2007. During her time as editor-in-chief, The District won numerous awards including top honors from the Associated Collegiate Press, Society for Collegiate Journalists and the Southern Regional Press Institute.

Jessica Clary, adviser to the District, said that Sun was always looking for ways to improve the paper. “She challenged herself and her staff to improve all aspects of the content: design, layout, photography—everything,” Clary said.

In addition to her experiences at The District, Sun was also president of the Georgia College Press Association and freelanced for The Savannah Morning News and The South Magazine.

Sun reflected on her time spent at SCAD and attributes her success, in part, to the experience she gained with Student Media. “I can say without a doubt that I wouldn’t have my job at Vanity Fair had I not joined Student Media,” she said. “I cannot stress enough that Student Media gave me real, everyday experience with writing, editing and working with others.”

Before working at Vanity Fair, Sun was Scenes editor at The South Magazine. Sun said, “As for future plans, I hope to work my way up the magazine industry and eventually work as an editor.”

Jeff Gill, former production director of SCAD Radio and a 2005 SCAD SCJ initiate, is now an animator on “South Park.”