Poynter makes fun of student papers, and I'll be damned if I know why

Andrew Beaujon of Poynter makes fun of one Georgetown student newspaper, wonders why the N.C. State paper didn't have the victory over Georgetown on its home page, which seems a fairly simple execution glitch on a weekend.

Beaujon's "Battle of Lepanto" seems to me to be fairly standard description of the crucial last minute of the game.

I think the whole thing is snide and nasty and unnecessary and a waste of bandwidth, but I'm willing to be corrected.

Well, maybe not "willing." But I'll listen if I'm missing something:

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/166991/march-madness-history-was-not-written-by-the-victors-when-nc-state-beat-georgetown/

 

First time I've clicked a Poynter link since Romanesko left. Can I make fun of them for that?

 

Probably just trolling for web hits.

 

This seems a subtle way of noting, "Why do I even bother with them anymore?"

 

Well, I don't disagree that the article is unnecessary. We print some college papers, though, so their pages often pop through our proofer, and when this was still a novelty for me, I was amazed not by the technical ineptitude so much as the boring, out-of-touch choices on content. Even the dailies for our big state university and the large, highly prestigious private university here pretty much blow, although we don't print those two papers, so I see them less often.

Which is not to say you can't find talented kids working on a college paper or website that overall sucks ass. Just that kids and the journalism professors who are around kids all the time have no more of an idea than anyone else about how to produce a lively product that engages a younger audience. Maybe it's because, as was the case with my generation as well, the cool kids have better things to do than engage in campus journalism.

 

OK, Frank, fair enough, but I'm not sure why I see why seven paragraphs on the final 1:11 of the biggest -- and last, as it turned out -- game of the season deserved the cheap shot "Battle of Lepanto."

Or is it not a cheap shot, at somebody writing for a student newspaper? That's the way I'm seeing it, but maybe I'm overthinking it.

 

I agree with you that it's a cheap shot.

 

Yes, and we all were sitting around and discussing the Battle of Lepanto again just the other day, weren't we? ... We weren't? Well, of course we weren't.

Another reason why I rarely dial up Poynter anymore.

 

Let's dredge (drudge?) up those "kicking a dead horse" photos.

 

This item suffers from the author's having, for timeliness's sake, I guess, fallen in love with the idea that it just had to be a March Madness/colleges-related article, no matter what. And then, of course, from his not handling his idea especially well.