Dean's Message
Now here's a 'daily' challenge

Dean Paul Voakes

The transformation has begun.

No one really knows what the daily news will look like 10 — or even three — years from now, but we know that it is changing radically. With the Internet, readers and viewers are not only getting their news and information at any time of day, they are talking back to their news providers.

They are also blending their online news-time with online shopping, selling, chatting with old friends and chatting up new ones. They are getting and sending information in print, photos, sound and video.

It's a media transformation, and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication wants its students to be on the transformation's leading edge. This spring, the weekly student newspaper has begun to evolve into a daily multimedia news outlet serving the entire CU-Boulder campus.

In January, under the leadership of instructor Michelle Fulcher ('78) (herself a former editor at The Denver Post) and student editor Andrew Villegas, the Campus Press started shifting its focus, ever so carefully, from print to online and, more important, from a weekly to a daily. By the end of spring semester, it included these features:

• Specialized News and Features: The new Campus Press offers pages on the Web site for News, Entertainment, Community, Outdoors, Money, Health, Culture, Opinion and Spotlight.
• Blogs: The editors have selected a stable of eight "bloggers," nonstaff student writers who can publish their opinions, pictures, news and information on the site any time of night or day. Readers' responses to the bloggers are also published 24/7.
• Podcasting: The site publishes audio files of interviews with prominent campus or Boulder figures.
• Survey: The site runs a regular poll to gauge student opinion on current issues.
• Weather: A live feed constantly updates current Boulder conditions.
• Nation/World: The site offers up-to-the-minute news from wire services.
• Live radio: The site links to a continual live feed from KVCU, the student radio station.

You can see it all at www.thecampuspress.com.

Next up? This summer we'll be providing more room for this expanding enterprise, either by doubling the size of the Campus Press newsroom in the Armory or moving it to larger quarters elsewhere on campus. We'll need new hardware, new software, a sound booth, digital video and audio recording equipment, and new furniture, for starters. In our current climate, these are not enhancements the state budget will be providing.

From our friends and alumni, the early response to these plans has been phenomenal. Leona "Nonie" Lann, one of the School's most steadfast supporters over the years, has challenged the rest of us to raise up to $100,000 for the "daily news" project – which she will match dollar for dollar.

Since December we have raised just more than $35,000 from 83 donors, including $19,000 given in memory of Mal Deans (see page 19) to create a space in his name in the new newsroom.

Also, we've received another pledge of $20,000, which means that if we can raise another $45,000, Nonie will match it all – for a total of $200,000 with which to launch this project.

If you think you'd be interested in lending a hand to this transformation, let me be the first to invite you to send a check, in any amount, to the CU Foundation, 4740 Walnut St., Boulder, CO 80301. Please write on the memo line, "SJMC Multimedia News Fund." If you have questions as you consider a gift, by all means call me at 303-492-4364 or write me at Paul.Voakes@colorado.edu.

I thank you; our students thank you!