The Next-Gen Student News OrganizationA 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.

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

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

Did youalso know that..

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

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).

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.

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.

Social

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

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!)

Here's thereality...

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

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.

Ready for somegood news?

Local94 percent of users' IP addresses were in Macon-Bibb! Not many flybys. There is a strong, loyal niche audience.

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

A few guesses...

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.

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...

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.

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!)

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

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.

NOT just "digital-first"Audience-first!Focus your efforts on where your audience is primarily.

Remember, you have editorial autonomy!

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

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

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