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The Daily Collegian gives "scholarships" (stipends) to all editors and some senior reporters. These stipends don't come close to a wage, but it's something. Giv

The Daily Collegian gives "scholarships" (stipends) to all editors and some senior reporters. These stipends don't come close to a wage, but it's something. Giving something to all editors and some reporters and then giving nothing to a web developer is insulting.

scott_s 17y ago
I don't understand why it's insulting. I assume that the editors and senior reporters have been on the paper for at least an academic year - otherwise, I don't see how they could become editors or senior reporters. So the little money they have goes to the people who've put significant amounts of time into the paper. The advertisement is for a new staff member. I assume new reporters don't get stipends either. So I don't see why it's insulting to treat this staff member the same as other staff members.
- ZachPruckowski 17y ago
  Simultaneously, the advertisement is for the position in charge of their website and online presence (which is to say a decent portion of their operations), and is thus a fairly senior position. Stuff just gets more complicated when money's involved. It's one thing to ask for a hand with something you're not making money off of, and another thing to ask for free help on a project that's paying you.
  - scott_s 17y ago
    I think you and others are looking at it from a normal business transactions perspective. College papers aren't a business. I would be surprised if their advertisement revenue even covered operation costs. Students work on college papers for the same reason they attend class: to learn. Also, I think you're using "senior" in a different manner than I. I'm using it to mean seniority, or length of time spent working on the paper. You're using it to denote importance.
    - ZachPruckowski 17y ago
      As a learning experience, this sounds fairly sub-par. Having just finished college, I'll say that the thing that made extra-curriculars a great learning experience was the ability to work with people who knew as much as or more than you. As a reporter at that paper, you'd get a lot of low-risk practice writing articles, and get advice and critiques from people with a few year's experience. By contrast, this job for the college paper would be throwing yourself into a position where others depend on you, and you have no one to learn from. It's all the difficulty of self-teaching and working with the safety net of a mentor, combined with all the responsibility of having dozens of other people depend on your work.
      - scott_s 17y ago
        It's better than nothing. In a bad economy, it's hard to get professional experience before graduation. Doing this probably wouldn't be as good as a paid internship at a company, but it's better than having nothing on the resume.
      - com 17y ago
        I was shocked years later when I worked with some MSM how amateur they were compared with the fairly "best practice" stuff we invented ourselves for our university paper. Personally, the best learning environments I've ever been in were when I was at the sharp end of the problem, and had to work it out with other people from first principles. I'll never forget what I learned with sweat running down my forehead. More traditional teaching like tutorials or apprenticeship-like things aren't so memorable for me, and the apprenticeship model (apart from the positive side of implicit learning of many intangible processes) tends to lead to repetition of ages-old worst practices by the learners in later life.
        ZachPruckowski 17y ago
        The reason college organizations develop these best practices is because they're ideally structured for an apprectice-ship/mentor-ship situation. Even the highest ranking and most experienced student has only been there for 3-4 years, so they're experienced enough to know what worked in the past, but the turn-over's high enough to avoid getting bogged down in "this is how we've always done it" or "that didn't work last time". Because the old guard is out in the Real World in a few years, there's less of a delay for a genuine innovator to move from rookie to chief. In the corporate world, those innovative youngsters get frustrated with the idea of spending 10+ years climbing the corporate ladder to be able to put their good ideas and/or unique perspective to use, so some of them quit and become entrepreneurs. It's a very fine line that 3-5 year programs seem to walk rather well.

scott_s 17y ago

I don't understand why it's insulting. I assume that the editors and senior reporters have been on the paper for at least an academic year - otherwise, I don't see how they could become editors or senior reporters. So the little money they have goes to the people who've put significant amounts of time into the paper. The advertisement is for a new staff member. I assume new reporters don't get stipends either. So I don't see why it's insulting to treat this staff member the same as other staff members.

ZachPruckowski 17y ago
Simultaneously, the advertisement is for the position in charge of their website and online presence (which is to say a decent portion of their operations), and is thus a fairly senior position. Stuff just gets more complicated when money's involved. It's one thing to ask for a hand with something you're not making money off of, and another thing to ask for free help on a project that's paying you.
- scott_s 17y ago
  I think you and others are looking at it from a normal business transactions perspective. College papers aren't a business. I would be surprised if their advertisement revenue even covered operation costs. Students work on college papers for the same reason they attend class: to learn. Also, I think you're using "senior" in a different manner than I. I'm using it to mean seniority, or length of time spent working on the paper. You're using it to denote importance.
  - ZachPruckowski 17y ago
    As a learning experience, this sounds fairly sub-par. Having just finished college, I'll say that the thing that made extra-curriculars a great learning experience was the ability to work with people who knew as much as or more than you. As a reporter at that paper, you'd get a lot of low-risk practice writing articles, and get advice and critiques from people with a few year's experience. By contrast, this job for the college paper would be throwing yourself into a position where others depend on you, and you have no one to learn from. It's all the difficulty of self-teaching and working with the safety net of a mentor, combined with all the responsibility of having dozens of other people depend on your work.
    - scott_s 17y ago
      It's better than nothing. In a bad economy, it's hard to get professional experience before graduation. Doing this probably wouldn't be as good as a paid internship at a company, but it's better than having nothing on the resume.
    - com 17y ago
      I was shocked years later when I worked with some MSM how amateur they were compared with the fairly "best practice" stuff we invented ourselves for our university paper. Personally, the best learning environments I've ever been in were when I was at the sharp end of the problem, and had to work it out with other people from first principles. I'll never forget what I learned with sweat running down my forehead. More traditional teaching like tutorials or apprenticeship-like things aren't so memorable for me, and the apprenticeship model (apart from the positive side of implicit learning of many intangible processes) tends to lead to repetition of ages-old worst practices by the learners in later life.
      - ZachPruckowski 17y ago
        The reason college organizations develop these best practices is because they're ideally structured for an apprectice-ship/mentor-ship situation. Even the highest ranking and most experienced student has only been there for 3-4 years, so they're experienced enough to know what worked in the past, but the turn-over's high enough to avoid getting bogged down in "this is how we've always done it" or "that didn't work last time". Because the old guard is out in the Real World in a few years, there's less of a delay for a genuine innovator to move from rookie to chief. In the corporate world, those innovative youngsters get frustrated with the idea of spending 10+ years climbing the corporate ladder to be able to put their good ideas and/or unique perspective to use, so some of them quit and become entrepreneurs. It's a very fine line that 3-5 year programs seem to walk rather well.