As a member of the IUPUI Student Media staff, I just want everyone to know that we are working on the new platform. It's been a challenge having to lose the Sagamore due to funding issues and the fact that newspapers are dying. A group of students came together and dedicated our entire summer to finding out what the campus needs and better our coverage.
So don't loose hope on ISM. Please remember we are students, we are all learning, and we are all spending so much time trying to make the student publication the best it can be--and a printed publication isn't even it.
There are quite a few students who would be pretty heartbroken to read this after all the work we've done. We are working so hard.
There is a lot more put into this than you may even realize. Don't be quick to judge. And just keep your eyes out, this system will be running smoothly soon.
If the objective of ISM is to do what the Sagamore did but "better our coverage", then nothing has changed. If ISM continues to be a mouth piece for IUPUI's administration, then ISM has already failed.
As a former journalism student (at IUPUI) myself, I know that the journalism program is a very small program. I remember one graduating class had maybe a dozen students. Compare that to IU-Bloomington's journalism program, which had a few hundred graduates during a graduation ceremony that my family attended a while back.
I also understand that, as a student, everyone has other commitments. As I'm sure fellow bloggers know, sometimes we need to choose family or the job that pays us rather than use our free time to write a blog entry or spend a few hours doing research for one. But I'm also a firm believer to not publicly show a project that's only partially finished. ISM may be growing, but that is no excuse for a broken search engine, links that all lead to the same place, and some poorly designed HTML.
I can see the reliance of AP articles in the beginning, but again, it's a tradition carried over by the Sagamore. They could at least put the wire stories in their own section and not hide the ISM original stories at the bottom.
As for some being heartbroken if they read this, criticism is part of the news business. Get over it. The criticisms I've posted are hardly huge hurdles. The website issues are minor, and simply prioritize original stories over wire stories. Finally, be an independent voice for the student, and not PR for the IUPUI administration. In other words, don't follow the tradition set by the Sagamore, and you'll be at least on the right path.
The bottom line is that there are hundreds of people who are doing the same sort of thing, but better, without the "benefit" of university support and education. If ISM cannot produce something better than average, they need to work on it for a while before taking it public.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, the idea that the IUPUI School of Informatics or IUPUI School of Journalism are on the "cutting edge" of online journalism is preposterous. They could be doing more than IUB, but instead they are an embarassment to IUPUI.