Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Rochester (NY) paper launches citizen media project for college students

The Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle and a partnership of seven area colleges have launched a new citizen media project created by college students, for college students. The site went live on Monday Aug. 20.

Called “The Loop,” http://www.rocloop.com/, the site is overseen by a Web editor at the paper with a staff of seven content editors, one from each college, with a mission of portraying college life from a student perspective. The content editors are serving paid, for-credit internships at the newspaper.

Each college also will have a faculty advisor and two other primary student contributors, a content coordinator responsible for organizing campus submissions and a “backpack journalist” creating multimedia packages for the site. These contributors will receive a small stipend and academic credit.

The colleges involved so far are the State University Colleges at Brockport and Geneseo, St. John Fisher, Nazareth, Roberts Wesleyan, Rochester Institute of Technology and Monroe Community College; the paper says it plans to expand to others.

The Democrat and Chronicle’s report on the site’s launch can be found at:
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007708200322

(Author’s disclosure: I am the faculty advisor for my institution, St. John Fisher College, and my daughter is one the content editors for one of the other partner schools.)

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