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Widespread Praise For College Stations' Coverage of Student Protests

B

Barry

The protests at various college campuses related to the war in Gaza have spurred a number of stations at the affected colleges to rise to the occasion, and provide extensive coverage. This probably provided valuable experience for student journalists, and increased publicity for the stations.

One of Many Positive Articles
 
From the linked story:

So many people tuned into WKCR's online stream at the time of the raid that it caused its website to briefly crash.
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The funny part about that is the station has a very good FM signal that people could have used, but instead they preferred to listen online. The tweet noted over 10K users online, and didn't even mention the FM signal.

Congrats to the student reporters. It's a tough story to cover. Lots of strong personal feelings on both sides, but they have to put them aside and just report what they see.
 
TheBigA said:
The funny part about that is the station has a very good FM signal that people could have used, but instead they preferred to listen online. The tweet noted over 10K users online, and didn't even mention the FM signal.
Click to expand...
I recall reading that many people from all over the country listened to WKCR's reporting, online.
So the online feed helped extend the station's reach.
 
Keep in mind that college students don't have radios.

My daughter lives in a dorm on the City College campus, right in the heart of the action a few nights ago. If she was going to listen to WKCR, or to WHCR right there on her campus a couple of blocks away, the only way she could have done so was streaming. There's no radio in her room. I don't think there's one anywhere in her building.

(She was getting most of her information about what was happening on her campus from the Instagram live feed from the City College newspaper, which I don't think exists in print at all.)

This is the world we live in here in 2024.
 
fybush said:
Keep in mind that college students don't have radios.

My daughter lives in a dorm on the City College campus, right in the heart of the action a few nights ago. If she was going to listen to WKCR, or to WHCR right there on her campus a couple of blocks away, the only way she could have done so was streaming. There's no radio in her room. I don't think there's one anywhere in her building.

(She was getting most of her information about what was happening on her campus from the Instagram live feed from the City College newspaper, which I don't think exists in print at all.)

This is the world we live in here in 2024.
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I'm a radio geek with a whole stereo system (reel to reel, turntable, 8-track) in my dorm room and only one radio that'll pick up FM. A couple of AM portables and a few AM tube units I fixed up, too. Heck, I even have a CBS Audimax/Volumax in my room hooked in to the stereo. The stereo itself has no tuner whatsoever hooked into it, though.

My roommate has an alarm clock with a radio built in (he's never turned the radio on). But the rest of my friends? You're more likely to find cassette decks or turntables in their rooms than radios. You're spot on here, fybush.

The only other guy I know who listens to radio on campus has a (modern) transistor radio he uses to listen to the Opry on WSM. That's it! It's streaming for everyone else.

The other reality is that a frighteningly small number of schools have actual college stations anymore. Most of the existing ones are streaming and don't have much actual support/training. It's quite sad, really.
 
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AMRadioGuy said:
The other reality is that a frighteningly small number of schools have actual college stations anymore. Most of the existing ones are streaming and don't have much actual support/training. It's quite sad, really.
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Depends on the school. A lot of NPR stations are owned by colleges. But they're professionally staffed, as required by the CPB funding rules. They're not training grounds for students. In the case of WKCR, the radio station at Columbia, it is a student run station, although they also have a tradition of allowing alumni to be involved.
 
TheBigA said:
Depends on the school. A lot of NPR stations are owned by colleges. But they're professionally staffed, as required by the CPB funding rules. They're not training grounds for students. In the case of WKCR, the radio station at Columbia, it is a student run station, although they also have a tradition of allowing alumni to be involved.
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Oh sure, that's absolutely true. I was talking about "college radio" in the more traditional sense - students on the air, producing the newscasts, etc. Most colleges that have student stations are just free-format without student news staffs and whatnot like back in the good old days. But even that is now a rarity.

I was enrolled at John Carroll for one semester and they have a station there that is well-done. Sadly, I was enrolled there in the fall of 2020, so I was taking online classes from home...
 
AMRadioGuy said:
Oh sure, that's absolutely true. I was talking about "college radio" in the more traditional sense - students on the air, producing the newscasts, etc. Most colleges that have student stations are just free-format without student news staffs and whatnot like back in the good old days. But even that is now a rarity
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It depends on how the station is funded. Columbia has a top notch journalism school, so it seems to figure that some of those students would want to apply their knowledge on the radio. Journalism is basically the same regardless of the platform. Some stations are funded as a student activity, so they separate the school part from the club part.
 
Generally there are very few articles about radio stations in the media, as attention paid to the medium has been decreasing.
But when there is really noteworthy programming, as was provided some of the stations at large universities that were the scene of extensive protests, the media occasionally does take notice. I saw numerous lengthy articles that provided very positive descriptions of their coverage.
 
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