Report: Print beats online where you'd least expect

Editor's note: I'm writing this as a news aggregation without opinion to provide another example for this week's upcoming assignment. I included the question at the end in an effort to encourage an online dialouge, but that wouldn't be necessary in a basic aggregation. I just thought it fit here.

HARTLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. — College students favor their printed version of their campus newspapers vs. the online product, a recent PoynterOnline report says.

The article quotes several professionals who help oversee student publishing saying student prefer the dead-tree version and cites a survey that says 63 percent of students classify themselves as light or frequent readers of the print editions.

“My experience is that if something is free and it's convenient to get and whatever is in it is relevant to them, they have no qualms about printed versus non-printed,” said Kevin Schwartz, general manager of The Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the article. “A college newspaper, if it's done right, is all of those things.”

Who would have thought or is this all wishful thinking based on anecdotal reporting?

Debating the rush with hyperlocal

Note: Below is an example of news aggregation. This blog’s topic is online journalism and its audience is this class. Also, because this involved something related to what I do, I offer my view. In your case, you might just want to summarize the news unless you feel you have something to add that makes your content more compelling.

HARTLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. — This weekend, I posted a couple dozen photos on the Facebook page for Hartland Patch, but could I have waited? In this post, Rick Edmonds of PoynterOnline discusses whether hyperlocal news needs to be published immediately, saying unlike breaking news of regional or national importance, “I have a hard time, though, recalling a neighborhood story I wish I had known about right away.”

Edmonds says he doesn't mind waiting for his hyperlocal news because it's just not a prominent as bigger stories. He's also "underwhelmed" by digital hyperlocal news, preferring the more traditional community papers, instead.

What I would say as an editor of a soon-to-be launched hyperlocal publication, is the sooner I can publish content, the sooner it's useful to the site's audience. If I wait, they might never find it as they move on to something else, but once it's up, those who start looking later in the week should still be able to find it.