Mid-September, I talked about one of my goals for the semester being the beginning of live chat discussions regarding Central Michigan University.
Well, we are well under way with it. We wrapped up our second “Digital Roundtable” discussion earlier tonight with CMU’s Dean of Students Bruce Roscoe, Director of Student Life Tony Voisin and Director of Academic Advising and Assistance Michelle Howard. We discussed a variety of subjects over one hour, including the football team, what we’d like to see in the next University President (we currently have an interim), graduation rates for students (in four years or more?), ways to promote the university’s academic programs and more.
Our first one was on Oct. 5 with our student body president Jason Nichol and vice president Brittany Mouzourakis.
So far, the Digital Roundtable is going pretty well (we use CoverItLive). CM Life hasn’t promoted these discussions as well as I would have hoped, but I think it’s a good idea to get our feet wet with this whole thing and look at ways to improve on it. Our next Digital Roundtable will have the desired promotion, I think.
But from doing just two of these one-hour chats, I’m already seeing the benefits of starting these live chats. Here’s three big ones:
- Reader input. People getting involved in our chat range from CM Life staffers, current students and alumni, and everybody is pitching in with good questions and ideas. For example, Chad Livengood, a former CM Life editor, pitched a great idea earlier tonight for the university to get more involved in recruiting:
“I have a pretty simple idea for recruitment: Get some of your most enthusiastic alumni together (I’ll volunteer) and professors together and send them out into high schools. Since graduating in December 2005, I’ve sent a few students toward CMU’s journalism program who were contemplating going to Michigan State. I think glossy magazines and admissions recruiters can only do so much to explain individual programs. For journalism, one event that CMU faculty, alumni and current students who attend is the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association’s annual conference. I spoke at this event in the winter of 2008 when I still worked at the Jackson Citizen Patriot and was very disappointed to not see a single representative from CMU’s journalism school with a booth at the Lansing convention center.”
- A good connection between the university and students. While not as many students have gotten involved yet with these chats, these Digital Roundtable events provide a convenient way for students to connect with university officials, since not many can always make it out to an open forum. Many have expressed interest in the live chatting when they got involved, which is nice to see. My hope is we can get interim University President Kathy Wilbur in to one of these soon, since she’s starting open forums with students in residence halls.
- Story ideas. This is probably one of our bigger benefits as a newspaper. In the first chat with SGA, we were tipped off to the creation of an ad hoc committee to work with CMU Athletics on the controversial new tailgating policy. This led us to finding out the external sound system ban was lifted. In last night’s chat, we came up with a couple nice story ideas: How CMU is working with the expected decrease in enrollment, and (kind of related) the appointment of a CMU representative in Chicago to recruit prospective students.If you guide the discussion correctly, you can definitely mine out a couple really good story ideas per chat. Another great incentive to start them.
If you are the editor of a student newspaper, or an online editor anywhere, I’d recommend starting these discussions. Talk to university officials, student leaders, anybody – get them to join these chats. I mentioned three huge benefits of doing it, but there are several more that could benefit you that I might’ve forgotten about.
I’ll provide updates on the Digital Roundtable, as well as updates on other goals I set last month.
Posted by Brian Manzullo at October 19, 2009
Journalism, Social Media