Quality of the College View 2010/2011

I stopped reading it last year. I wont judge what it is this year as I haven't read an issue in months, but last year and for years before that it was a rag pushing its own agenda and I wont waste anymore time reading it.

Maybe this year things are different and I would hope they are, good idea for a thread.

agree with previous posts, stopped reading it after the sensationalist rubbish and mostly negative news reporting. maybe this year was different, it appears next year they need to re-build

And is it just me, or is their website; www.thecollegeview.com a year out of date...

The paper could really do with a lot more proofreading.

It's actually laughable that in this day and age they could possibly neglect their website for so long.

Dont they know print media is dead?

Iano_ wrote: »

Should they not have a web designer? There's no mention of one as far as I can see!

Wouldn't need one, just someone to stay on top of content management.

It's laziness, exactly what I've come to expect from such lazy journalists to begin with.

to be fair, they don't exactly give the impression they'd welcome any help offered. Sending an e-mail stating you are 'hiring' for next year gives a message that it's more about work than about volunteering / having fun / enjoying yourself.

monument wrote: »

With the current resources and software, it needs to be worked into
the production process. But if most of team is not interested in the website, they just need to put PDFs online and leave it at that. I'm not saying it's imposable, it's just a lot of mind-numbing, time consuming work for even two or three people.

It might be worth encouraging writers to produce a print and web version of their articles. The web version would include relevant links, a link to a sourced image and possibly even adjusted writing. This would make manual updating of the site much quicker.

I'm not sure what CMS the current College View site is running on, but I'm sure there are plugins for whatever it is that would add functionality to the backend to allow writers to submit their articles to the site themselves. A quick vet and approval from the online editor would then be all that's needed.

Yes it's a big task, but most of the work would be in setting up the submission system. Make it possible for all the section editors to approve articles as well to speed things up.

Other colleges have online news publications, other media societies in DCU have (excellent!) and frequently updated sites as well. In my opinion college newspapers should be taking advantage of their positions to go crazy online, see what works and what doesn't. To not have an online presence at all is, quite frankly, bollocks.

Granted I'm sure they've had problems with finding the people willing to put the work in over the past year, the newspaper industry isn't very appealing at the moment (to put it very mildly).

Gonna throw in my two cents.

As a newspaper the College View has massive potential. It's a small, media savvy campus that should benefit from a fortnightly newspaper.

One of the problems it faces is its image. The College View has never been received well by even a large minority of the student population - it has a reputation for being a rag that has been there since I started here in DCU.

Even when the paper changed its layout and was reporting strong news and sport stories, it still came under criticism.

If the paper doesn't rock the boat, it's deemed boring. If it does, it's too opinionated. Unfortunately, no editorial team has hit this problem on the head. It is my view that the paper should stick its neck on the line, it should have controversial commentators (which it hasn't since abolishing the comment editor position), it should stir things because that's what gets people reading.

The latest couple of issues of the College View - in terms of its layout and content are quite poor.

But unfortunately, as other posters have rightfully stated, it is a far bigger task than nearly everyone realises. The CV team do have degrees, theses, jobs and with no paid positions, working right through the night is not very appealing. And the worst thing is, getting criticised on boards.ie just demoralises the editorial team even more.

If you have a problem with an article, do the mature and sensible thing and write send a letter to the editor.

Indeed, the CV needs a major overhaul and I certainly don't envy next years editorial team. It needs to consider what the student population want - and in my view that's being entertained and informed. But it also needs to be different and unique as well as holding the College and the Students Union to account. With cuts set to be across the board in universities, it's an ideal time to write for the College View.
But more importantly, it needs constructive comments. Have the critics forgotten that the CV is your paper. You pay for it. Get involved instead of shouting it down on an online forum.

Choc123 wrote: »

If the paper doesn't rock the boat, it's deemed boring. If it does, it's too opinionated. Unfortunately, no editorial team has hit this problem on the head. It is my view that the paper should stick its neck on the line, it should have controversial commentators (which it hasn't since abolishing the comment editor position), it should stir things because that's what gets people reading.

To be honest, that's a bit of a double-edged sword. I gave up on reading it when it turned into a bitchy pro-USI propaganda leaflet. To me, and I'm sure many others, it seemed to be run by an elitist clique intent on pissing everyone else off and forcing their own agendas, which is completely not what you want.

Controversy is only good if it's properly directed. The SU aren't the enemy, and I'm sure it doesn't help them deal with the University authorities when the student media seems intent on undermining them at every turn. If the College View want to fight for the students, then they should help them rather than constantly try to make them look incompetent.

Imagine if the Union and the College View worked together. I'm sure as a united front they could get far more students involved in both groups and have much greater success lobbying the University.

I'm not saying the SU is perfect, and of course genuine scandals should be reported on, but much of what I've read has been just petty and malicious. The SU were elected by the student body, the CV team was elected by... a small clique of mostly journalism students. It actually disgusts me when they claim to be "the voice of the students." They don't speak for me and little of what they say is in my interest.

Of course, all of this is based on the College View from a year ago. I haven't read it this year so don't know if anything has changed. If so, then that's great. Keep up the good work ! But if not then they really need to take a proper look at how they're running things.

monument wrote: »

The main things which are time consuming is the need for editing and subediting -- everything from spelling and grammar to fact and libel checking.

And even with an easy to use system (like Wordpress which isn't messed up etc), you'd have to make sure everybody knew how to use it. And then you have to convince them to use it...

Keep in mind that with a paper like the College View all of this content is edited in a short time. Having to upload this to a CMS is a time consuming process.




Over all in the last few years Irish student newspapers have not been great online, to say the least. Some have been great, others ok from time to time, but overall very mixed from year to year. Very up and down in general. And that's including the papers with some full time staff.

What other media societies in DCU? Is their online content really comparable to the amount of articles publicised every second week in the College View?

I agree with your overall point, but it's very hard to "go crazy online" when the paper it self is so time consuming.

It shouldn't take long to put stuff online. Scan, create pdf, upload takes about 15 minutes, what's sent to the printers? couldn't that be uploaded. I'm not in DCU anymore but I would have read a simple pdf if it was made available.

On the quality, I have no idea what it's like this year. In the past it was always quite good for a paper put together by volunteers, even last year when it was obviously biased it was quite well put together for a obviously biased paper.