Student paper to go independent — and online
The college decides to tighten its grip on the student newspaper. So the students bail and plan to publish independently and online.
Good for the students! The students of the Quinnipiac University Chronicle, that is.
Pronounced KWIN-uh-pe-ack — according to the university’s web page — Quinnipiac is located in Hamden, Conn., 90 minutes or so northeast of New York City and two hours west of Boston. Enrollment is about 7,400.
Ed Stannard of The Register in New Haven, Conn., reports:
Student journalists at Quinnipiac University are determined to go digital next year.
The students met this week and decided not to stay with the Quinnipiac Chronicle because of an administration plan to select the student newspaper’s editorial staff, according to Jason Braff, editor-in-chief. All 20 students who applied for editorial positions withdrew their applications, he said.
“We kind of decided to move on, so we are done with the Chronicle and the school can have it,” Braff said. “We don’t want to be part of what they’re doing right now.”
Instead, most of the staff, plus others, hope to launch a news publication on the Web.
“We had a 2½-hour meeting … and we decided we are going to start our own online newspaper independent of Quinnipiac,” Braff said.
Stannard reports that an administrative task force recommended the paper be cut loose and made independent anyway, but the university’s Faculty Senate voted unanimously Tuesday to shoot down the proposal.
This sort of thing take guts. Go for it, kids. Go for it!
There’s a lot more to it, of course. Read Read Stannard’s story in the Saturday Register. And here is the student editor’s take on the topic, from what was apparently the final edition of the semester on April 23.
Find the Chronicle’s home page here. Read more about Quinnipiac on the university’s home page.
May 4th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
That is completely awesome! I wish them best of luck and hope to hear about them throughout the year from our trusty blogger
May 4th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Some of the things the QU dean has said have been pretty amazing. This is where I earned a masters, it’s same town where I live and the Republican-American reported this story the day before the Register. (woo hoo!)
And, in case you’re wondering, the hilly thing next the campus is Sleeping Giant State Park. See the giant dude?
May 6th, 2008 at 10:03 am
It’s great that they are doing this and I am proud of their initiative.
It’s a small thing, and it is a very confusing situation, but your summary of the relationship of the Faculty Senate’s vote and the administration is not quite accurate.
The administration has argued inconsistently for independence at some point, but has put forward interim plans that place the newspaper under direct administration control (”Lahey’s Chronicle”). The university senate voted to maintain the status quo ante, in which students had editorial control of the paper and the editor-in-chief assembled his or her editorial board and made editorial decisions.
It’s going to be a very difficult start for the new venture, and it’s unfortunate that the university was not able to provide better support for these students. It seems unlikely, for example, that they will have the financial resources to make the transition from web to paper, and newsprint-on-paper still thrives on a college campus. Of course, when it comes down to choosing to read the long-standing Chronicle, now under fairly direct editorial control of an administration that is very press-conscious, or an independent paper published by our best journalism students, the choice is clear for me. I just hope the same is true of the student body.