I’ve discovered there are folks who regularly read The Daily Pennsylvanian online every morning shortly after we publish at 5 a.m. For those unusually dedicated readers and many others who would like to get their fill of Penn news before going to bed, I’m pleased to announce we’re now publishing at midnight.

In the Internet age, earlier publication has become the norm for newspapers both large and small. We’ve recently implemented some newsroom changes that make the same possible for us.

Some articles will trickle in after midnight due to when events end and when news breaks. Nonetheless, our new mindset is to get content up as quickly as possibly.

Over time, that will mean more breaking news stories and updates. I’m really looking forward to it and hope you do too.

It’s not news to anyone that the newspaper business is undergoing a revolution. Gone are the simple days when you picked up The New York Times in the morning to see what the headlines would be. Now, I read more than half the articles in the morning paper on the Internet the night before. The newspaper industry has gone Web-first.

As a result, reporters entering the industry are expected to have a much wider range of skills than before. Being a great reporter is no longer enough if you don’t know how to work your way around video, blogs, online interactive content and the like. And it’s the job of student newspapers and their editors to prepare students for this highly competitive job market.

I just spent all of last week at a conference in Georgia with over 60 newspaper editors from around the country. And let me tell you, we take this job very seriously. We are also well aware of the task ahead of us.

For a college paper, the print edition is still what students turn to most – sure, some days it might just be for the Sudoku, but we like to believe that you’ll at least glance at the headlines on the front page before turning to page 12. As a result, few college papers post regular news online throughout the day. I’m not sure I see this changing across college papers anytime soon.

Nevertheless, all eyes in the industry and around the country are on the Web. Though the print product is still a college newspaper’s most important way of reaching students, our Web sites are now allowing us to bring new features to our readers like audio, video and interactives. They also allow us to publish more articles and thus cover more of our campuses. And our Web sites are now the place to look when breaking news of any kind unfolds on campus.

But student papers have to take it a step further. In our conversations last week, Sara Gregory, my counterpart at The Daily Tar Heel, emphasized the importance of remaining “a teaching paper” at all times. And just last Friday, Julia Wallace, the editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, shared with us the hardships for newspapers in today’s media market. For the first time in her career, she’s struggling with the difficult task of having to lay off staff.

The market is tough and we have a responsibility to help Penn students interested in journalism survive in it. It is for this reason that college papers must take larger strides in multimedia innovation. And almost every editor that walked away from this week’s conference now has this task in the forefront of his/her mind.

Here at the DP, we’ve been working (and continue to work) to serve our reader with a better Web site, interactive features, videos and galleries. But we, like many papers, strive to do more. We want to teach our staffers to become 21^st century journalists.

It’s no secret that there’s much uncertainty in the industry these days. No one can predict where college newspapers will be in a few years. But after spending a week talking with other editors, I do know that college newspapers will be upping their Web presence. Over the next year, we will all be rolling out major changes online to help bring our reporters the skills they now need.

I don’t think there’s ever been a more exciting time to be college newspaper editor.

In Dec. 2005, when the Harvard Crimson first began publishing its Sports Blog, a rash of blogs linked to Ivy League newspapers emerged as we all attempted to keep up with the Joneses. At the time, the DP quickly followed with the sports-oriented Buzz and finally, in the fall of 2006, the culmination of all Ivy blogging efforts: the Spin.

(What, you think it’s a conflict of interest to have the opinion blog editor post about the blogs? Pssh.)

This transition from newspaper to media organization has proved daunting in some cases. The Columbia Spectator’s first effort, SpecBlogs, died and then experienced an impressive resurrection ten months after its first conception. Now their version of Inside the Newsroom, The Editors Notes, gives a voice to the Spec Managing Board, while undergrads and grad students alike express themselves on the opinionated Commentariat.

With the Spin, we’ve evolved over the years, too.

Sometime between that first historic post, which optimistically pleaded that “the conversation … never end,” to more recent posts, just-as-optimistically begging for reader guest blogs, we’ve also transitioned from “online columnists” to real bloggers who post much shorter reaction pieces and curse like sailors.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past week or so, many of you, especially readers on campus have probably noticed that articles on dailypennsylvanian.com have just plain not worked.

You’ve likely been seeing some version of this error.

Service Unavailable - DNS failure

The server is temporarily unable to service your request. Please try again later.

Reference #11.c48f748.1206020220.6a1305f

Well, I’ve been seeing it too, and now I’m here to explain it to you. The explanation is long and complicated, but trust me, it’s a rip-roaring story involving shadowy corporations, quarreling lovers and at least one Scandinavian country.

Read the rest of this entry »

As our election blog already posted, Hillary Clinton is going to be on campus tomorrow for what the press release called, a “major policy address.”

If you want to see her speech live and raw without any of the commentary you get from CNN or the major networks. Just visit dailypennsylvanian.com/live around 10am tomorrow when her speech is scheduled to start.

Or just check back later in the day to see the footage at whatever time is convenient to you.

If you’re interested in how we’re able to stream live video, we’re using a service called USTREAM.TV which is dead simple to set up. All you have to do is register an account and click broadcast and it will detect any camera attached to your computer and let you start streaming. Sure the quality might not be as good as you get with a satellite truck, but for $165,000 less, it’s quite a deal!

Edit: 2:06am, March 26, 2008

Throughout the stream, the number of viewers fluctuated between 80 and 85, this with relatively light promotion. A box on the bottom line of the print newspaper and a box at the top of the web layout when the stream went live. Quality of the video wasn’t so great though. You can see the recorded version from ustream here if you’re interested. http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/live/

The biggest issue was how laggy the connection became, stopping quite frequently to buffer. With the number of viewers we had, while the audio stayed relatively clear, the video got very jerky, sometimes freezing up for seconds at a time before resuming. So while ustream seems to work great, I’m not sure how scalable it’ll be for larger broadcasts and bigger papers.

After finishing the stream, I downloaded the FLV from their server and easily integrated it into our own system.

All in all, I’m chalking this one up as a success.

One of our staff photographers, Alvin Loke took this shot at this week’s basketball game against Princeton.
The paper always seems to get criticized for writing harshly about Penn’s athletes: running photos of their grim expressions during losses, being blocked on the court, and so on. I felt this capture-although not suitable for print due to its lack of action- encapsulated our emotions as student fans, not journalists.

As Remy Cofield takes the hand of his teammate Brian Grandieri during a lull in the play, we’re all reminded of the friendships and community that exist underneath the busy craziness of day-to-day life at Penn.
Go Quakers

One of the most remarkable stories in the news coverage of this year’s presidential election is the impact being made by college students across the country. Because of Pennsylvania’s late primary, students here at Penn have been relatively insulated from the candidates’ intense courtship of the youth vote in states such as Iowa. That said, no one with a television set or access to the internet could possibly ignore the media frenzy.With that in mind, the editors of the DP were interested in finding out exactly what Penn students are thinking about U.S. politics in general and the presidential election in particular. We published results of a scientific opinion research survey this past week on Tuesday 2/5 (pdf) and Wednesday 2/6 (pdf), coinciding with our comprehensive coverage of Super Tuesday.The survey was conducted over a period of four days (2/1-2/4) online. Invitations to participate were sent via e-mail to a random sample 3,000 undergraduate and graduate Penn students, netting 601 unique responses (and a +/- 4% margin of error, different for subgroups).

Unfortunately, due to space constraints, only a limited set of the results could be published in the paper. If you’re curious, you can download a full copy of the data summary here.

Super Tuesday and this past weekend’s primaries have left John McCain the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. In the tightening Democratic race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, however, Pennsylvania’s late primary might ultimately count quite a bit. This survey is, therefore, great insight into how campus will divide up come April 22.

P.S. Some might be interested in knowing that we used the software LimeSurvey.

Harvard has J.K. Rowling; Penn has … Emeril? That seemed like it might be the case early this morning as DP editors received an e-mail with a dubious flyer announcing celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse as the 2008 Commencement speaker.

However, even though IvyGate reported it, you won’t see a story with that news in today’s DP. When we hear about important events, we make sure the news is credible and seek confirmation before rushing to print. In this case, our sole source was an amateur-looking flyer, containing a typo and the same picture of Emeril that’s on his Wikipedia page. Not what you’d expect for a major University announcement.

Receiving the e-mail at 1 a.m., it was clear we weren’t going to reach University officials before sending the paper to print. Rather than take our chances with a late-night e-mail, we went home for the night, with plans to properly confirm today.

So check back later, because we’ll be sure to update dailypennsylvanian.com with any — confirmed — news about this year’s Commencement speaker.

To see the flyer as we received it, click here.

The first of our two recruitment meetings is tonight! If you’re interested at all in working for the DP, and trust me it’s a great opportunity, come down to our office at 4015 Walnut Streeet (right between Metropolitan Bakery and an art gallery) at 4:30 for Business and 6:00 for Editorial.

All of us have prepared short little talks for you about what each department does and what sorts of things you can do if you get involved. Also, for editorial folks you’ll be coming into the office right in the middle of production hours so you’ll get to see the office in action, as people buzz around and go about the business of putting out a daily newspaper.

Remember, this isn’t just for people interested in writing and reporting. There are so many other things involved in putting out a paper. Photo, Video, Web Design and Programming, Design, Art, Editing, Advertising, Finance, Credit, Marketing, and more.

Even if you’re not sure whether you want to work for a newspaper, please do come and check us out, you might like it like I did. When I first came to Penn I had no idea I would end up here. I wasn’t involved in my high school paper, never considered journalism, but going to a recruiting meeting sucked me in, I started writing and designing and haven’t looked back since.

Tuesday we had a meeting with Provost Ron Daniels along the same lines as the University Communications meeting, but this time the only people representing Penn were Daniels himself, and his assistant Leo Charney, who we grabbed after the meeting for a quick photo/video shoot which resulted in Wednesday’s “Personalities” piece, and the accompanying video on dailypennsylvanian.com.

Read the rest of this entry »