By Darren Johnson
Campus News
You may have seen our print edition in a street box or kiosk in New York City. It’s amazing we’re still alive, but that’s not by accident.
Campus News made most of its headway as a newspaper found on college campuses in the Northeast.
We started over 11 years ago. Our niche was having wire racks at two-year schools that mostly didn’t have a paper of their own.
Especially on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, and Queens.
But it was hard for us to get onto campuses in the other boroughs.
A couple of years ago I had the idea of getting street news box permits for outside CUNY schools. And then we worked a deal with an agency that runs many of the Manhattan newspaper kiosks, just before Covid struck.
So when college campuses shuttered, we still had a way to get out the newspaper!
In any case, Covid has been a real bummer for free newspapers. We notice most of the other kiosk windows are empty, and our papers move at a near 100% clip because of this free newspaper news desert that has been created.
Advertising is down, considering many of our advertisers were on Long Island or in the Hudson Valley, and it’s hard attracting new advertisers in this climate. We also have a web site, but you know how that goes… Facebook and Google steal all of the web money.
I’ve had to find more gainful employment, as often happens when you own a print newspaper in the 21st century, so I went back to teaching Journalism for a college. It’s just a couple of four-credit courses as an adjunct, but the steady pay helps during these uncertain times.
In my back pocket, I have some academic credentials that allow me to be the ultimate mercenary for colleges in need.
I guess when I was younger, I still was idealistic – hopes and dreams and all that – and got some degrees, and did some things that now benefit older and more bitter me.
Yay, younger me!
Getting back into teaching now, though, is kind of cool, and I feel great after giving a lesson.
I think it’s Zoom, and Canvas. I love these programs!
Online education used to involve clunky LMS software that resembled a 1994 BBS on Compu$erve. Sure, post a video, maybe, that no one would watch. It was all passive.
But Canvas is really intuitive. It allows me to communicate with students any way I’d like. It comes off as more intimate.
And Zoom. Because I was never on the tenure track, I learned “other things.” For example, I’ve done about 100 podcasts with scripts and audio effects. I’ve also made fun videos.
Running a Zoom class is like producing your own TV show, live.
I start with music. Yesterday, as the class was to begin and the little black boxes were populating with sleepy eyed younger people, I queued up King Crimson’s “The Court of the Crimson King.”
I do that so they can’t hear my coffee machine spitting out a cup of Colombian for me. No “mute” for me!
I work on lighting – it’s actually a chandelier hanging behind my old eMac desktop. I run a comb through my hair before turning on my camera. Shower? Eh, there’s always later for that.
Zoom allows me to keep the lecture lively.
I can cut to an arresting graphic. Give students three minutes to write something. I’ll find a three-minute song and say that they must have their work posted on Canvas before the song ends.
The song can’t be too jarring. Maybe “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce.
I try not to be corny. I’d never play the “Jeopardy!” theme song.
With Zoom, it’s so easy to weave in abstract ideas. Cut to a web page. Cut to a quick explainer video.
It’s easy to bring in guests. For my Journalism sections, I’ve brought in top journalists from New York and national outlets.
When I was a Journalism student back in the day, the typical guest was an owl-eyed obituary writer from the Podunk Herald. Now I’m getting established media talent to visit my classes, because it’s really easy for them to do so.
Professors with a little bit of showmanship, and who are adept with technology, must be relishing Zoom.
In any case, Campus News is riding out the pandemic. I will get this paper printed in a small Upstate town, truck it to a guy in the Bronx, who will get it into the various news boxes and kiosks throughout the City. And that’s journalism, too.
My hope is that people will get vaccinated, and colleges will open as normal in Fall 2021.
Especially community colleges, where we used to move a lot of papers. The reason why we did well at community colleges – despite the myth that students won’t read anything that’s not on their phone – is because not every student has a computer at home, or reliable Internet, and some just want a break from their phones.
When the pandemic hit, it was made apparent how many students needed to be given computers and even wi-fi hubs to be able to do their work.
And now we’re seeing that both CUNY and SUNY have to address the fact that students have massive food insecurity.
Campus News has been helpful to many students. Right now, we’re mostly geared as an entertaining newspaper, but our larger mission includes writing articles on how to succeed in college.
If you’d like to help, just let me know.
Also, if you’d like to join me via Zoom, I have some public sessions lined up.
Visit zoom.cccn.us at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 17, for my first talk. I will revisit an article I wrote about great bands that never had a Top 40 song. Yes, King Crimson made the list. Find out the nine others.
I’m also working on a piece about “one-ALBUM wonder” bands. I’ll talk about that, too.
Anyway, stay strong, and stay well, and visit me on Zoom. Or send me an email at editor@cccn.us with your ideas.
Hopes and dreams and all that.
Darren Johnson publishes this paper, and one other, and recently tested negative for Covid.
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