While some traditional print journalists might not be catching on to the 24-hour news cycle (Buffalo News, why don’t you have Twitter updates yet?), I’m happy to report that some up-and-coming journalism students get it.
Most students at The College at Brockport, where I teach, won’t return until the spring semester at the end of January. No campus newspaper comes out until then, either.
That didn’t stop the college’s student newspaper, The Stylus, from sending out a breaking news email and updating its web site with the news that Third Eye Blind is tentatively scheduled for the spring concert. (Full disclosure: I advise the newspaper, but I knew nothing of this until the e-mail hit my inbox, just like the rest of the Brockport community.)
These students realize that journalism is a 24-hour-a-day job, regardless of the medium, and that when they find out big news, they can’t wait for the print edition or even, in their case, for when they return to school. I am confident they are not the only college journalists who work this way.
They are thinking “online first, print once or twice a week” as Martin Langeveld preaches. And that gives me hope for the future of journalism.
journajunkie 