The Ghost of student media future

College newspapers are boring.

There, I said it.

In an era where professional journalism is going belly up, their subsidized college counterparts are plodding along on a course that lacks any sort of innovation, willingness to experiment or ability to leverage the tools of the social web to reinvent the way we present and report the news.

Why?

Ernie Smith is a genius, but why didn’t a college student come up with the idea to create ShortFormBlog?

I could speculate all day on this. The reporting in student publications is as it was. Some fantastic, the rest is what it is. But I’m really talking about the delivery of student news content. In a world where it’s cheaper than it ever was to publish on the web and easier than ever, what’s the excuse for doing the same old things we’ve always done? College Publisher might have been a great idea back in 2001, but is ceding control of your entire design a really good idea in an age where better options abound?

This is a personal issue for me, naturally. I spent a few years in student media during my college days, owned an independent internet radio station after college (that was staffed entirely by students) and spent a summer at a major newspaper watching first-hand how “big media” works. I’ve always been convinced there were really daring things we could, especially using the web and even on the backend to lower the barriers to entry for small publications looking to deliver content via the web.

I’m convinced that some institution out there is on the cusp of pushing the envelope, that some innovative group sees the opportunity to start a bushfire that spreads across the entire field, by simply deciding to do something completely outside of the box. There’s no one-sized fits all answer for this, either. But someone will have to step out first, before others will join the Joneses in the pool.

Who will it be?

ESPN explores social media and college sports

ESPN has the first of a four-part series this week on college athletics and the social web. Today’s article is about Twitter and Facebook and how it’s changing the way that coaches recruit.

Here’s an excerpt:

Tim Beckman sees it a different way. The first-year Toledo football coach has been using Twitter — @coachbeckman — as a way to connect with recruits and to try to keep local and in-state players’ minds on the Rockets.

Beckman likened Twitter to Alabama coach Nick Saban’s use of videoconferencing with recruits. It’s a way to push the envelope and get an edge without actually breaking NCAA rules.

“I’ve been around this business my whole life with my dad being a coach, so I know how important the recruiting is and getting quality players that you bring into your program,” Beckman said. “We’re not able to communicate with them as much as we’d all like to be able to communicate, so you’ve got to find ways to do it. And Twitter just happens to be a way that [Toledo] came to me about, so each day I learn more and more about it. It’s not that I know everything about it, but it’s something I think we need to explore.”

Beckman said he tries to tweet on a schedule to make sure it’s always current. He sends one as he’s leaving the house for work, another around lunchtime and then one toward the end of the day. Unlike several other coaches who use Twitter to talk about goings-on in their personal lives, Beckman said he likes to keep the focus on promoting his team and enticing recruits to come to Toledo.

How many of these coaches do we think are actually doing their own tweets?