Since graduation I had pretty much forgotten about my alma mater’s school newspaper, The Rambler. Several weeks ago that changed. I received a call from one of the newspaper’s writers wanting to do an article about my involvement in the Fiesta Movement. The article itself isn’t bad, although they did misquote me and there is a huge typo*. You can read it for yourself right here. My issue is not with the article written about me. I was flattered that they wrote an article about me and that it ran on the front page no less.

My issue is with The Rambler itself. I found out the article had been published when a friend tweeted this. I went searching for The Rambler’s web site to read the article for myself. After reading the article itself and then spending about ten minutes browsing the rest of the web site and reading through a few of the articles I got to thinking. The conclusion I came to is simple: The Rambler could and should be doing a lot better, not only in terms of content, but delivery.

The following is a collection of my thoughts on something that could stand to be improved. This is meant as constructive criticism, although it will probably come off as the bitter ramblings of an alumnus. Either way I’m ok with it.

Problem 1: The Web Address
If you want to be taken seriously you need to register a top level domain, not transyrambler.wordpress.com. So many things would be better than this. A domain name and hosting cost next to nothing. A domain name at the most is $10 a year, but some hosts will throw it in for free if you sign up for extended hosting. My host has a hosting package which would more than cover the traffic the online edition of The Rambler for a mere $7 a month. With tuition now topping $25,000 at Transylvania I would hope the school newspaper would have enough in it’s budget to cover these expenses.

Problem 2: Lack of a Strategy
Although I referred to it as the “online edition” above, a more accurate term would be “the stories from the print edition copied and pasted onto the web and then never given a second thought.” It’s obvious that a second thought has never really been given to the “online edition.” It all starts with a cohesive strategy. The obvious starting point would be to figure out the audience. An online edition would be able to start researching what other college’s are doing with their online editions.

Problem 3: Design
Everyone’s a critic when it comes to design. Say what you will about my own design choices, the core purpose is for this to be read as a blog, one post after another. The opposite could not be more true for The Rambler’s site. Built on WordPress, it reads like a run of the mill blog. WordPress can be used as a versatile content management platform. For a good example of what I’m talking about, check out Cal State Fresno’s Collegian Newspaper. The site is powered by WordPress, but made to look more like a newspaper. There are tons of tools out there already to make this happen with WordPress, it wouldn’t require hiring a team of designers. This is something just about any CS student could figure out.

Problem 4: Lack of Web Only Content
The paper’s most immediate audience is Transylvania’s student body. Without web exclusive content they have absolutely no incentive to look up the paper online. There is so much opportunity here. Web only content could be more timely news, such as what is happening in Lexington over the weekend. This could also include content aimed at audiences outside of the student body who might only read the online edition. Think Lexington area residents or Transylvania alumni.

Problem 5: Lack of Discussion
Very rarely have I seen a comment posted. The heavy moderation of comments discourages discussion. I had to go back several pages to find an actual comment, and when I did find one it was “For once your column makes me smile” followed by “Thank you! That makes two of us.” The internet is built on openness. If you only approve positive comments, no one is ever going to say what they are actually thinking. You have to allow honest and open discussion. If you try to censor conversation and only allow the positive to come through people will see right through you. Unfortunately this is something Transylvania has never really understood. Not only will supporting discussion help create a sense of community around the “online edition” of The Rambler, it will also help increase web traffic. When people start heavily discussing stories, they will also start heavily sharing stories.

Problem 6: No Social Media Integration
I’m still surprised Transylvania as a University is on twitter. They are usually really behind when it comes to understanding technology and progress. What is even stranger is that the student run newspaper is absent. Not just from twitter, but from all forms of social media. At the very least there needs to be a “share this” button at the bottom of posts.

Problem 7: Realities of a 1,100 Student Campus
An unfortunate reality is that students are busy. Most are too busy to write for the paper. Instead of depending on every writer to produce one hundred articles in a school year, figure out how to encourage hundreds of students to produce one article over the course of the year. I have two suggestions on possible ways to make this happen. The first way would be to modify the freshman English curriculum to include one assignment that requires students to write something with the intention of getting it published. If you get published, you get an A. This would encourage quality submissions of content, of which you can never have too much. A second way would be to monetize with advertisements. The money would never be enough to pay an entire staff of students, but could instead be used to encourage more students to submit quality content. Writers could be paid based on which articles are most popular based on a mathematical formula. WordPress already has a good way to track this called Popularity Contest.

Conclusion
This probably has come out as negative, but it’s really meant as some constructive criticism. There are endless possibilities with an online edition of The Rambler, it bugs me to no end to see it in it’s current state. As an alumnus I’d really like to have a reason to read the school’s newspaper online, but right now I don’t. Unless of course they’ve written an article about me.

*The misquote is in the final paragraph. I only said what is within the first set of parentheses. The typo I’m referring to is when they said “Delta Sigma Phil” instead of “Delta Sigma Phi,” that one should have been obvious considering the article ran on the front page of the paper.