As a former college newspaper editor, I think Mr. Koretzky gets it only partially right. Yes, many college newspapers have boring, blah or downright terrible websites. But not because college journalists are uninterested in the Internet -- many never pick up a print newspaper, even their own product. The stigma of "online only" still exists, but it's vanishing quickly. Those who attend a journalism school have had the importance of the Internet drummed into them from day one.

The problem is that many established college newspapers work with a hosting company, the largest being MTV subsidiary CollegePublisher, and have for more than a decade -- since the days when building and maintaining a newspaper website was much more difficult than it is now. CollegePublisher keeps its clients on a fairly strict template that is far more rigid (and less intuitive) than the content-management systems used by media professionals. Many college newspaper managers want to get out of a relationship with a company that leaves little room to improve a newspaper's online presence. In some cases, that requires breaking a contract. In many others, it means convincing skeptical adults (in our case, a professional adviser and a publishing board) that going it alone is a wise and sustainable choice.

My college paper was entirely student-produced and directed, but the top managers were accountable to the publishing board. And the board did not believe that students could build and sustain a content-management. They wanted to know what would happen when the initial designers graduated or moved on and could no longer provide technical support. We argued that the advent of Wordpress and similar sites mean the level of knowledge required is much less than it once was. But in the end, they disagreed, and we stayed with CollegePublisher. I doubt our situation was unique.

The result is that more innovative online work tends to come from startup or alternative on-campus publications. CoPress, an open-source startup, has attracted some attention as an alternative for established publications, but has yet to gain a lot of traction.

Oh, nooooo...Now the Chroncicle is getting its articles from the Huffington Post. That's sad. Very sad.

I absolutely ditto libbynelson. For college news webmasters, CollegePublisher is an ugly, rigid pastebox, but a common one. I have decent web design skills, but being confined to that content manager meant I couldn't do much more than basic stuff. Text, pictures. Sometimes I'd try to trick the layout into looking better (or merely fix the homepage so the ads didn't ruin the text and photo alignment, as they occasionally did), but then the code would mess up the automated e-mail edition.

We were happy we could have a poll.

People like paper - they just don't want to pay for it. Look at how many people (commuters) read the Metro News. Ditto when the student newspaper comes out.

Has a lot to do with their advisers as well, I would argue. More often than not, their advisers are old school journalists, not digital media professors. While there are plenty of digital media scholars in J-Schools or the average college communication/English Dept., the ones doing the "advising" for the student newspaper are, in my experience, as old school as they come.

I don't agree with this adviser. I think that college campuses are simply the last communities where print is thriving because they are such tight communities and print is still convenient there. Students pick up their (free, usually tabloid format) student papers at any of many locations they walk past on their way to class and they scan the paper before (or during, unfortunately) class and don't have to boot up their computers to access it. Think of all the advantages of print: portability, ease of showing things to people who are sitting next to you, no worries if you lose it, good to read while you're waiting, etc. All these things work particularly well on college campuses, but are less important in towns and cities where people work desk jobs and commute in their cars.

There are MANY student media groups doing quite innovative things online. The Associated College Press gives Pacemaker Awards each year (http://www.studentpress.org/acp/winners/opm09.html). Check these out and then tell us college newspapers don't care about the web.

Perhaps Mr. Koretzky has an axe to grind after being "let go" as the adviser to a student newspaper.

I agree with disembedded - because this was in the Huffington Post it deserves a story in The Chronicle?

Apparently many journalists are snobs, worried about WHERE stories appear (or originate). NYT: Wonderful. Huffington Post: Bad. In print: Good. Online: Bad. My view is, let the story stand on its own. Even sources like The Enquirer get it right long before the NYT (e.g., John Edwards). And quit worrying how well students use their venues; worry more about whether their reporting is good.