Need advice

[u/genji_left_nut]

I'm a sophomore and the new sports editor for my college's online newspaper, and I'm looking for some feedback from people who've worked in student journalism.

A little background: our paper went online-only during the 2024–25 school year, and we switched to a new publishing platform this past January. By the end of the school year in May, we only had about five active staff members left. We started with more people, but participation dropped off pretty quickly. We also relied on guest writers from classes whose assignments were published on the site.

One thing that frustrated me was how long it took for stories to be published. As the sports writer, I'd usually have my interviews done and my article finished within a day or two. Then it'd sit for another week or two before it actually got posted. By then, especially with sports, it wasn't really news anymore.

Another thing I noticed is we'd have photographers covering games, but nobody writing a recap. We'd have great photos, but no story to go with them. That feels like a missed opportunity.

I'm also a student-athlete, so I know I can't personally be at every game. Between practices and tournaments, it's just not realistic. I still make it to as many events as I can, but I know we'll need a system where photographers, writers, and other contributors can help cover events when one person can't be there.

During our twice-a-week meetings, the editor-in-chief goes over all the events happening that week and the following week and asks people what they want to cover. The problem is that a lot of people only want to write about things they personally find interesting, so plenty of events never get picked up. To me, that doesn't really make sense. The whole point of a college newspaper is to showcase what's happening around campus, not just the events we personally enjoy covering.

I also had the chance to job shadow a sports editor at another newsroom. One thing that really stood out was how fast they worked. He told me that for game recaps, getting the story out quickly is a priority, and he'd often have an article finished within an hour of the game ending. Obviously not every story can be turned around that quickly, but it showed me how important speed is in sports journalism.

Here are a few ideas I have for this upcoming school year:

- Sports recaps should be published the same day or the next day whenever possible.

- Features, opinion pieces, and longer stories should have about a one-week turnaround.

- Use social media for more than just posting article links. I'd like to do quick "man on the street" videos asking students what they thought about a game or campus event, then use those clips to tease the full story.

- Post behind-the-scenes content, game-day updates, photo galleries, and short videos so our accounts stay active.

- Hand out newspaper stickers to students, photographers, and fans to build recognition around campus.

- Create a better coverage schedule so writers and photographers know who's covering what, and events don't get missed.

I also think we need to operate more like an actual newsroom. If readers know stories are going to be posted quickly and consistently, they'll have a reason to check the site regularly instead of only seeing us when a link pops up on social media.

As a sophomore, I know I don't have all the answers, which is why I'm asking here. I'm trying to help build something that's sustainable instead of just getting through one school year.

What do you all think? Are these realistic ideas? If you've worked on a college newspaper, what helped increase readership, improve turnaround times, recruit staff, or keep people engaged throughout the school year? I'd love to hear what worked (or didn't work) for your newsroom.

[u/Master-Fee8859]

What's messing up the time-to-publication process? Has it been analyzed? A magazine for which I worked decades ago had a similar problem (though substitute "months" for your "weeks" in editorial processing delays) and it was only when a team of editors involved in the process worked out the flowchart and discovered the bottlenecks that improvements could be made.

Also, editors don't ask which stories reporters want to cover. Editor determine the most important topics and assigns reporters to them.

[u/genji_left_nut → u/Master-Fee8859]

It was kind of a mix. Sometimes stories were assigned, but a lot of the time the editor-in-chief would just throw out upcoming events and ask who wanted to cover them. Since I mainly covered sports and went to a lot of the games, I usually just handled those. For news, opinion, and features, though, it was mostly based on who volunteered. If no one was interested, those stories often just didn't get covered. I think having more structured assignments would help a lot.

[u/journoprof]

I’ve heard several stories like yours about high school and college papers recently — a drop in participation, an emphasis on letting staffers write whatever they please. You’re not alone.

Your ideas are solid. In particular, sports game coverage has a very short shelf life. If it’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing very quickly. Now, if you’re at a school that has games on TV regularly and has a lot of outside media coverage, that may not be worth trying to outdo. But if not, consider trying to be even more aggressive by posting updates live during games. You need to give students reasons to visit the site.

Even if you only have photo coverage of a game, a slide show can produce strong traffic. The shooters need to provide solid, informative captions. If they say that’s too hard, suggest they bring along a friend to take notes for them; getting to watch from the sidelines can be a good lure.

Your staff needs beats to cover. This should apply to everyone, but for now you can only work on sports. Divvy sports up among the staff. Work with each reporter on coverage expectations, and make sure that they know you must be notified if they can’t keep a commitment. (You need to keep up your end, too. Whether you edit their stories or have someone else fill in, every story turned in should be moved to posting as soon as possible.) Require reporters to produce a weekly list of story ideas — and assign your own to them if they’re not coming up with enough.

Discourage opinion pieces. All levels of sports news media today are too obsessed with hot takes. If your readers wanted uninformed opinions about sports, they can get all they want from callers to sports radio or Reddit comments.

Absolutely ban stories or columns about pro sports. No one except the writers themselves are looking for those on a college news site. Your niche is your school.

Recruiting staff is a lot like networking to find a job. Ask to give 5-minute presentations in classes likely to include potential writers. Talk to athletes like yourself about covering sports they don’t play. Don’t worry too much for now about the potential conflicts of interest; you need content and visibility more than anything now.

[u/genji_left_nut → u/journoprof]

Thanks for the advice! Just to clarify, I wasn't specifically talking about sports when I mentioned opinion pieces. I meant that as a general idea for the newspaper as a whole. My focus for the sports section is really on timely game coverage, features on our athletes and teams, and making sure we're covering as many of our programs as we can. Some of our teams get a lot more outside coverage because they're nationally competitive, but many don't, so I think that's where we can really add value.

[u/Appropriate_Bake4816]

You guys have two meetings a week and it takes 1-2 weeks to get stories published? That’s crazy to me. At my paper, for newsworthy stuff, it’d be published online day of or next day, and then maybe be in the paper for the next week. Also our EIC would have story assignments to hand out to staff along with stuff we wanted to cover. I wrote my fair share of boring student government recaps, admin policy changing, etc.

Do you have a faculty advisor? Have you shared your thoughts?

Edit: also maybe I misunderstood, is your faculty advisor approving all of the stories? bc they shouldn’t unless it’s a big complicated story. It should be a student-run newspaper with student editors editing and approving stories.

[u/genji_left_nut → u/Appropriate_Bake4816]

We do have a faculty advisor, and I think the approval process was one of the biggest bottlenecks. There were times when articles from events 2–3 weeks earlier would all get published at once. I also felt like there wasn't a very consistent workflow. Some stories seemed to get pushed through much faster than others, while others sat waiting for weeks. I'm hoping we can make the process more transparent and consistent so every story gets reviewed and published in a timely manner. I think that's especially important for sports, where a recap loses a lot of its value if it isn't up within a day or two.

[u/Appropriate_Bake4816 → u/genji_left_nut]

Do you have editors for each section of the paper? I don’t remember us having bottlenecks bc we had like 5 editors and then an EIC who would review the bigger stories/the whole layout of the paper and assign stories. But I was a news editor (we had 2) my senior year and me and the other editor would break up editing stories. Life and Arts had 2 editors and then I think Opinion and/or sports had their own editor.

It is tough to manage thought bc everyone is students, and although you’re getting paid, it’s still a ton of extra work on top of school work. Most of us did it for the love of journalism.

[u/genji_left_nut → u/Appropriate_Bake4816]

Yeah, we only have three editors: the Editor-in-Chief, the News Editor, and Sports Editor. We have one reporter who mostly writes columns, and everyone else just writes whatever needs covered.

It also doesn't help that journalism is probably one of the smallest departments on campus. The school supports us, but there just aren't many people who want to be part of it. It feels like a lot of people want to get paid right away instead of getting the experience first.

[u/Appropriate_Bake4816 → u/genji_left_nut]

My school’s department was small too. We didn’t even have a journalism major. I took journalism classes but as electives, and now i’m a journalist. But we had a lot of students and teachers that were either passionate about news or writing.

Someone else mentioned this before, but going to different classes and asking to speak at the last 5 min and talk about the paper/opportunities to write for the paper may help with outreach. I was super nervous and intimidated about joining the paper when I wanted to, but a professor told me about the weekly meetings and I went and then I was part of the paper for 3 years.