
This is why (college) old media is failing - adelevie
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/blogs/eic/2010/02/wanted_web_developer.aspx
======
adelevie
If the post confuses you, I'll try and clear a few things up. This paper is
still giving stipends to editors and senior reporters. They can't take even a
small cut in their stipends to provide a modest stipend for someone whose
skills are exceedingly more marketable than the ability to write in AP-style.

~~~
brezina
jesh. I went there. That is my college paper. And this disappoints me.

It is a good reflection on the newspaper industry

~~~
adelevie
I'm still a student at Penn State and I used to work at that paper. The
demanded skillset has increased while the stipend has cratered to zero.

ps: I'm aware of your accomplishments. You make the Penn State startup
community proud! Best of luck with Xobni!

~~~
jsb
Part of the trouble is also that the decision makers in charge of adding staff
and directing the digital version(s) of the Daily Collegian are not well
versed in the technology themselves. They probably just copied and pasted the
job post from last time and added in whatever new they needed, without knowing
that these can be extremely diverse skillsets. "Let's make an iPhone app! Add
it to the job description!" A lot of people think if you're "good with
computers," you can do it all.

~~~
jrwoodruff
This is true of many non-college newspapers even. It's changing, slowly, but
many of the people in charge today started when linotype machines were the
norm, and had been for the last 6 decades.

Newspapers are (still) not used to the modern pace of technology. My last job,
the editorial system was more than 12 years old, and was still running on the
original boxes 12-year-old dell boxes. Some had no USB ports, most had no
sound cards.

------
el_dot
_Applicants need a working knowledge of ASP/ASP.net, MySQL, Movable Type,
HTML/CSS and general web server experience. Knowledge of JavaScript, LAMP
(Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) servers, iPhone development knowledge, Adobe
Flash/Flex is a plus._

I guess this is what PG meant when he said:

 _The pointy-haired boss has no idea how this software has to work, and can't
tell one programming language from another, and yet he knows what language you
should write it in._

~~~
pchickey
Sure - the editor in chief, or whoever on staff wrote that description,
doesn't really know ASP from LAMP. But they do know the current programmers
use ASP.net and MT, and will need to continue using ASP.net and MT for the
time being.

In the past three years, the collegian website has added a lot of great
features, and the design has improved considerably. It looks like they're
still stuck on an old ASP backend, but the students responsible for the front
page have been moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, its a pretty huge
undertaking for unpaid (or close) full time students to replace a decent
working site with a decade of archives with with a Rails app.

In many ways, the Collegian is a representative good college daily - there are
many in much deeper trouble for failing to grasp the basics of good
journalism, not the basics of web 2.0. (Disclosure: Former Collegian photo
staff)

~~~
adelevie
The Collegian web site was cutting edge a few years ago. My predecessors
really did a hell of a job cooking up a brand new system (built on MT). The
previous system, from what I read, was archaic.

Sadly not much has changed over the last couple years and without proper
staff, nothing really will change.

------
rohin
Most college newspapers actually outsource the content management and hosting
for their websites to a company called College Publisher (owned by Viacom).

College Publisher takes 100% of the advertising revenue in exchange for
hosting the site and providing a CMS for "free". It's a small but lucrative
niche for Viacom.

By not giving up 100% of its online advertising revenue, this paper is
actually well ahead of its peers.

~~~
awa
I doubt a college newspaper would rake in the moolah with online
advertisement. I remember my college paper getting most of their paid ads from
local restaurants and businesses

They don't look very smart by not taking Viacom on their offer and then asking
for a volunteer web developer to work on the site.

------
oconnore
My University paper did something like this. They were looking for someone to
do some website design and maintenance for them at $300 a semester, and I
offered to help. Not because eleven dollars a week rewards the effort I would
put in, but because I felt like helping my University fix their embarrassing
web presence.

In the end, despite the fact that I had worked with them before, and came
recommended by the CS department, they demanded a full resume and a burned CD
with examples of previous work before they would even talk to me! They ended
up with an English major who "had experience with Dreamweaver", and clearly
didn't mind jumping through hoops for negligible reward :P

~~~
adelevie
It seems most senior staff for college papers (the journalism majors) think
that they can very easily apply their expertise and authority of print
journalism (most of what's being taught in journo programs) to the web. It
doesn't work and creates insulting instances like your story.

------
CitizenKane
I used to be the online manager at my college newspaper
(<http://mndaily.com>).

Working in the newspaper publishing environment is challenging for
programmers. For instance, while online advertising made up a sizeable portion
of the paper's revenue many of the salepeople at the paper had no idea where
the ad spots were on the site or even what a CPM is.

Also challenging was working with different departments that had different
workflows. We had to support the editorial process, the sales process, the
hiring process, etc.

But wanting to get programmers for nothing is crazy. The programmers at the
Daily were among the highest paid employees (only editor-in-chief, controller,
and president were paid more than the online staff I believe) there and it
would still takes months to fill a position with someone who had any
competence (knew HTML and could write something more than Hello World in PHP).

While I know times are tough this is pretty disgraceful. College newspapers
offer a good opportunity to get training in programming and allow prospective
coders to start working with teams and real projects. But doing it for no pay
really makes it a non-option.

------
johnohara
Just bought a Powerball ticket. $114M woohoo!

My odds of winning and her odds of finding someone are about the same.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
You know what's gonna happen? Whichever boyfriend (or guy with a crush)[1] of
a reporter there has the most tech knowledge is gonna get dragged into taking
it over. I've been in that situation enough times (though usually with event
stuff, not programming). That's basically the only shot they have at getting
free skilled labor.

[1] - Not that girlfriends can't be programmers, but college girls seem to be
better at roping guys into doing work for them than the other way around.

------
morisy
This ad is frighteningly similar to the ones out there in the real world at
all but the most progressive papers, only difference is they pay a _little_
bit better.

~~~
adelevie
The problem is that tech people can go _anywhere_ with their skills. They're
not limited to journalism. This means that newsrooms should make it a priority
to at least be somewhat competitive when it comes to hiring technical talent.

~~~
afterburner
Exactly. For the aspiring journalists, working at the college paper is a sweet
way to get an edge in the journalism world, something very few other jobs at
that level can provide. For the web developer, this is merely one of thousands
of opportunities, and holds no special lure for being the school paper.
Clearly, the journalists/editors here are looking at it from their limited
point of view. Given that, the tone of the ad is somewhat disrespectful ("you
have to know everything, but we'll pay you nothing")

~~~
Locke1689
I like to think of an internship as a kind of apprenticeship. In some cases,
the apprenticeship is worth it. For example, a tech internship at Google or
Microsoft lets you work on some of the most widely used software in the world
with some extremely competent people. In this instance perhaps being unpaid
wouldn't really be a big deal -- the real value would be in the experience you
get and the things you learn. Working for a college newspaper, however, is
unlikely to provide a good CS student with anything more than they'd learn on
their own with a rather useless name to drop at the end. While working for a
college newspaper may be a high accomplishment in the journalism world, it
doesn't really mean all that much in the tech world.

Also, Microsoft and Google pay. They pay _a lot_.

------
iandbrown
The collegian's web site runs on a windows server. lol'in at LAMP.

~~~
raquo
Well, theoretically, maybe they would like to switch platforms if the "intern"
could do it?

~~~
sliverstorm
Just means they don't know enough about the acronym to say 'WAMP' instead.

Theoretically, it could mean they want to switch. Theoretically.

------
bfirsh
At my student paper in the UK we are all unpaid volunteers. Is it any
different in the States?

~~~
adelevie
The Daily Collegian gives "scholarships" (stipends) to all editors and some
senior reporters. These stipends don't come close to a wage, but it's
_something_. Giving _something_ to all editors and some reporters and then
giving nothing to a web developer is insulting.

~~~
scott_s
I don't understand why it's insulting. I assume that the editors and senior
reporters have been on the paper for at least an academic year - otherwise, I
don't see how they could become editors or senior reporters. So the little
money they have goes to the people who've put significant amounts of time into
the paper.

The advertisement is for a new staff member. I assume new reporters don't get
stipends either. So I don't see why it's insulting to treat this staff member
the same as other staff members.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
Simultaneously, the advertisement is for the position in charge of their
website and online presence (which is to say a decent portion of their
operations), and is thus a fairly senior position.

Stuff just gets more complicated when money's involved. It's one thing to ask
for a hand with something you're not making money off of, and another thing to
ask for free help on a project that's paying you.

~~~
scott_s
I think you and others are looking at it from a normal business transactions
perspective. College papers aren't a business. I would be surprised if their
advertisement revenue even covered operation costs. Students work on college
papers for the same reason they attend class: to learn.

Also, I think you're using "senior" in a different manner than I. I'm using it
to mean seniority, or length of time spent working on the paper. You're using
it to denote importance.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
As a learning experience, this sounds fairly sub-par. Having just finished
college, I'll say that the thing that made extra-curriculars a great learning
experience was the ability to work with people who knew as much as or more
than you. As a reporter at that paper, you'd get a lot of low-risk practice
writing articles, and get advice and critiques from people with a few year's
experience. By contrast, this job for the college paper would be throwing
yourself into a position where others depend on you, and you have no one to
learn from. It's all the difficulty of self-teaching and working with the
safety net of a mentor, combined with all the responsibility of having dozens
of other people depend on your work.

~~~
com
I was shocked years later when I worked with some MSM how amateur they were
compared with the fairly "best practice" stuff we invented ourselves for our
university paper.

Personally, the best learning environments I've ever been in were when I was
at the sharp end of the problem, and had to work it out with other people from
first principles. I'll never forget what I learned with sweat running down my
forehead.

More traditional teaching like tutorials or apprenticeship-like things aren't
so memorable for me, and the apprenticeship model (apart from the positive
side of implicit learning of many intangible processes) tends to lead to
repetition of ages-old worst practices by the learners in later life.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
The reason college organizations develop these best practices is because
they're ideally structured for an apprectice-ship/mentor-ship situation. Even
the highest ranking and most experienced student has only been there for 3-4
years, so they're experienced enough to know what worked in the past, but the
turn-over's high enough to avoid getting bogged down in "this is how we've
always done it" or "that didn't work last time". Because the old guard is out
in the Real World in a few years, there's less of a delay for a genuine
innovator to move from rookie to chief. In the corporate world, those
innovative youngsters get frustrated with the idea of spending 10+ years
climbing the corporate ladder to be able to put their good ideas and/or unique
perspective to use, so some of them quit and become entrepreneurs.

It's a very fine line that 3-5 year programs seem to walk rather well.

------
Mankhool
There are more than 600 college newspapers in the US. This means that an
opportunity exists in these hyper-local markets to also report community news
and, perhaps, create something that may "save" (I know that's the wrong word)
the newspaper publishing industry.

~~~
marciovm123
We're working on that. e-mail me if you'd like to talk =).

-Marcio

------
gxs
I'm surprised they didn't want a minimum 10 years experience in iphone app dev
experience.

------
ZachPruckowski
I don't see how this is different from the real world. I see lots of ads for
"Unpaid Internships" that want extensive knowledge of the field and expect you
to already have the skills and experience the internship is supposed to teach
you.

~~~
imack
My other favorite is looking for a technical person for whom they will "split
the profits". Your local CraigsList "computer gigs" section will be filled
with these.

My favorite recent: "We are a couple of mompreneurs who are launching a
business geared to moms. We are looking for someone, preferably a mom so you
will already have knowledge of the target market, to help us with website
design, online promotion etc. etc."
<http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/rds/cpg/1621222670.html>

~~~
philk
That's hilarious. Doubtless they'll be offering a smaller share of the profits
as they're bringing their all important idea to the table.

I think I'm going to try this stunt with every service I consume. "Yes, you
see, you give me a haircut for free and then we split any resultant profits.
70-30, because the haircut was my idea".

------
brandnewlow
Why the heck is it still so hard to make iPhone applications? You'd think some
smart HNer would realize that every publication on the planet wants to have
its own iPhone app. But few of them can afford to pay someone $10k to build
one. I bet a lot of them could afford to pay $500 bucks though...

~~~
DavisShaver
There are a bunch of companies (check out Scoble's YouTube feed for a few)
that do this for a few hundred dollars.

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joelhaus
Not enough vision here... its a potentially great way to get free press and ad
space for your project while learning a bit about all the newspapers that will
be desparate for any programmer with knowledge of a dying industry can be
saved.

------
marknutter
And they allowed commenting... big mistake.

~~~
marciovm123
what's wrong with commenting on news stories? Isn't that what we do here?

