Who is still in the biz: Your college newspaper staff

Only three of us from my juco paper ever went into journalism in the first place. I'm now out of the biz after 10 years in newspapers. The EIC is still plugging away as a features writer at a community paper near our hometown. One of the news writers now holds the same position at a paper in the next county over.

I don't keep up with too many of the rest of them, but one's a high school teacher/yearbook adviser, one works for the National Park Service up in Alaska, one's a logistics analyst.

 

Of the 12 or 15 people I worked in the sports dept. I think it's me and one other guy still at all in the industry, and we're only about 8-9 years out.

I'm holding on tight to be the last one standing. What pride!

 

I am the only one still in the biz off my staff. One guy I thought would be a lifer didn't last 10 years in the game. Few others did it, but did something else. As far as I know, no one else is still in newspapers.

 

I can't recall how big of a staff we had at my daily (graduated 2000), but of the people who worked there in my three years there I can only think of one photog and our top editor that are both hanging on at papers -- both at the same big metro. Other than that no one is in the biz. A majority of us started out at a paper somewhere and almost all the rest were in some sort of related field.

 

For a small state school, we had an astonishing group -- one which this particular school has never matched before or since.

-- I held several editor positions including EIC. More than three decades in the biz.
-- My top reporter designs 1A for the dominant paper in a big, two-paper city.
-- My M.E. married her and went into a different line of work as they traversed the region, building their life and careers.
-- My sports editor has been at a major metro daily for more than two decades. I had the pleasure of working with him for a dozen years before the Staff Reduction Fairy left a lump of coal under my pillow.
-- The guy who "hired" me there also got to hire me into my second real job, and then went to above-mentioned metro daily and also has been there for decades as a highly respected writer.
-- The editor when that guy "hired" me went on to become the No. 2 editor for the largest paper in his native Hong Kong.
-- Another one of our SEs has three decades at a smaller suburban shop.
-- A features and news editor wound up with the L.A. Times.
-- My news editor became an assignment editor for a top-25 market TV news operation.
-- A sports reporter wound up with AP and then with above-mentioned big-market paper until he got Staff Reduction Fairied, too.
-- And our student adviser -- whom we always suspected of visiting the newspaper office during our off-hours because he had discovered our bar-in-a-file-cabinet and mini-fridge -- wound up resigning in disgrace after being caught red-handed stealing money from another student publication.

Not bad for a Division III outpost.

 

I guess I should have mentioned that one guy on staff, an international student, is now a big deal hoohaw for Bloomberg's broadcast division. I think he's in Singapore or, maybe Beijing.

 

Very few on my staff are still in it. One news editor is a copy editor in North Carolina. A sports writer is an SE in Pennsylvania. There's a news editor for an alt-weekly, a features writer for a regional magazine. And I'm a copy editor. And that's about it

 

Cool thread. Going to a somewhat smaller school, I had a lot of people on staff who weren't journalism majors, but of those who were, one is editor of a lifestyle magazine (it's an advertorial piece of crap), one does PR for a turf company, one is a designer/reporter for a tiny weekly, one is sports editor at a chain of weeklies, one was editing copy for a bigger metro in NC last I heard and one does PR for Family Day, a movement to increase parents' involvement in their kids' lives. I'm mostly home with my girls these days, but I have a steady freelance gig with the metro here, so I guess I count.

 

This is back in 1978-79 at a D-II school, remember.

Editor-in-chief is design editor for a 50,000 AM.

Managing editor (yours truly) is sports page producer for three-day Advance publication.

News editor just left business in January after 25 years.

One top reporter is writing for 75,000 AM in the state.

One top reporter is a Hollywood agent.

Features editor is working in composing at a 50,000 AM daily.

 

I went to school with a couple superstars... One covered the White House. One is an investigative reporter for one of the really big papers. One walked into a baseball job and has been covering them ever since... A couple are working for some pretty impressive magazines and websites...

 

I was our SE at Colorado State 1.5 years (until midyear graduation) and we have quite a few, including myself. Favorite part is that I work with a lot of them at The Coloradoan.

From Year 1:

*I'm our CSU basketball reporter and No. 2 football guy
*EIC is a designer at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.
*News Editor is an investigative reporter at the Sarasota Herald Tribune.
*Copy Chief is a designer at the Greeley Tribune.
*Football beat writer is our Xplore (outdoors section) reporter in Fort Collins.
*Entertainment Editor works at the Denver ESPN Radio affiliate

Year 2:
*EIC is our education reporter in Fort Collins.
*Chief photographer is a stringer in Fort Collins.
*Football reporter is one of our preps writers and main ECHL hockey writer.
*Football reporter 2 is writing preps and ECHL hockey at competing town/paper Loveland.
*Copy Chief is a designer for all the smaller papers owned by Media News in Colorado (Loveland, Longmont, Boulder).
*Entertainment Editor just started at The Denver Post.
*Managing Editor is a sportswriter at the Durango Herald
*News Editor is a reporter at the Durango Herald.
*News reporter is the new editor of our twice-weekly in the nearby town of Windsor.

A few from before I was an editor, too, including the CSU basketball writer in Loveland. Quite a few have gone the PR route, sadly.

 

Juco paper. Staff of 1. Not in biz. Thank god, since the idiot wrote an entire piece about Derrick Coleman being the best power forward in the NBA before the 1994 season. Paper also disbanded after graduation.