The document critiques traditional student news organizations for prioritizing print over digital engagement, revealing that far more visitors access their online platform than read the printed edition. It highlights the need for adapting to digital storytelling skills, improved mobile optimization, and a focus on social media to reach their audience effectively. The author argues for a shift in resources towards digital content creation to capture the majority of the audience that is primarily online.

1. The Next-Gen Student News Organization
A data-backed yet rarely discussed proposal for
student news orgs.
—Presented by: Carl V. Lewis,
@carlvlewis
—Presented for: mercercluster.com
editorial team
Prepared with and Markdown by a proud Mercer University Bear and Cluster
alumnus.

2. First, some hard truths...
You spend countless
hours trying to fill
newspaper page space,
designing pixel-perfect
InDesign layouts every
issue and yet...

3. 800 percent more people visit mercercluster.com than the number of copies of The Cluster
even get printed each month (3,000 copies, right?).

4. Did you also know that..

5. ...78 percent of
visitors last month
to
mercercluster.com
accessed the site
via...

6. Mobile! But nonetheless: We still aren't optimizing our content for mobile
—(i.e., we're setting embed widths in
pixels instead of percentage widths;
YT video embeds that aren't
responsive; worse, not properly adding
paragraph spacing because we copied
body copy straight out of InDesign).

7. THAT IS
SHOVELWARE!
A.K.A. - The worst digital publishing
mistake ever known in online news
circles.
Definitely not the type of work that will get you hired in industry by the time you
graduate... sorry, kiddos. Although certainly still important, you need more than
good writing nowadat – you need strong digital storytelling skills.

8. So where the heck
are all these 20k or
so unique users
each month coming
from?
Hint: Not primarily Google or search engines, despite strong SEO.

9. Social

10. Social platforms =
digital analog to
newsstands...
FACT: 81 percent of users
in Sept. were referred to
mercercluster.com via a
social media platform.

11. So why in Jesse Mercer's
name don't we have a
dedicated Social Media
Editor position?!?
Why aren't we hyperlinking more, all
filing breaking stories between print
cycle, including art with every article,
creating multimedia and interactive
components, etc.?
(trust me, it's way more fun than tinkering for hours in InDesign!)

12. Here's the
reality...

13. Digital is WAY more consumed
than print. WAY! At least
for The Cluster, that is.

14. But, unfortunately...
...the imperative of filling page space
in print eats up all our time.
Print = high distribution, production
costs, higher but rapidly diminishing
ad rev.

15. Ready for some
good news?

16. Local 94 percent of users' IP
addresses were in
Macon-Bibb! Not many
flybys. There is a strong,
loyal niche audience.

17. Some 23,000 unique visitors (94% of
whom resided in Macon-Bibb) visited
mercercluster.com last month.
—No more than 3,000 could have
possibly read print edition, because
that's all that's printed.
—So where is our audience? Clearly, on
digital and mobile platforms, not in
print products
—Why, then, do we put 90 percent of our
resources into the print product when

18. A few guesses...

19. 1. Tradition. A good thing at times, but not a justification for doing
things the way they've always been done just because
they've always been done that way.
—Obvious logical fallacy.
—Formula for eventual failure.

20. 2. Prestige of print
not based in reality.
Who's had a bigger impact
on journalism the last year
– Nate Silver or Jill
Abrahamson? Nick Denton
or Julia Pace? You get the
drift...

21. 3. Mistaken belief
that print
newspapers will still
exist in a decade.
Clay Shirky, of NYU's Graduate School of
Journalism, predicts less than five years
left before most news presses stop.

22. Still, it's the most exciting
time ever to be a young,
digitally-literate journalist.
You'll be leading digital newsrooms in
your early career (I was the online editor
at Savannah Morning News at age 22!)

23. Newspapers don't
define journalism.
Quality, watchdog,
investigative reporting and
innovative digital platforms
define journalism. It's
about the message + the
medium.

24. Tidbit: Users spend 67 percent longer on
articles that include art than they do
content without art.
—Digital is inherently visual medium.
—Not getting or finding visuals is the
equivalent of not getting all the facts or
talking to the necessary sources.
—Massive word count minimums simply
to fill space leads to poor prose.
Strong news writing is concise,
cogent, to-the-point, especially online.

25. NOT just digital-first
Audience-first!
Focus your efforts on where your
audience is primarily.
Remember, you have editorial autonomy!

26. The only sane
response to change
is to find the
opportunity in it.”
— Jeff Jarvis

27. Recommendation: SoLoMo + data-driven
journalism + cutting back size of print
edition

28. Queries? Concerns?
Think I'm crazy?
Email me:
hello@carlvlewis.net.
Slides: bit.ly/clustersermon