Student editors do a lot of stupid things.

They sit in the newsroom calling sources when they should go to their offices for face-to-face interviews. They grab lunch when they should cover a breaking story. They leave new, expensive equipment sitting on the bleachers in the gym. They run banner headlines complete with misspellings on the top of Page 1. They live with (or, perhaps even worse, date) the student government president. They take crowbars and hammers to the newsroom in a moment of do-it-yourself ignorance (true story).

Yes, student editors aren’t always the smartest lot, but they are students. Perhaps they don’t know any better?

What’s your excuse?

The thing that gets my blood boiling when I attend the annual College Media Advisers national convention isn’t all of the asinine things student editors do (although I do hear a great deal of that). It is a different type of news that makes me want to give someone a good shake.

I’m sitting in or leading a session and a student timidly raises their hand. Then, in a soft voice, they ask what to do if “xyz” problem is happening in their newsroom and they are alone.

It seems I’ve heard it all. Advisers who the students have only seen once (the conference typically is after midterms). Advisers who tell the students to “figure it out” themselves. Advisers who cower when administrators give directives. Advisers who simply find something “more important” to do than help their students.

Shame on you!

I’m probably writing to the adviser pool who doesn’t warrant this message. But, just in case one of you is reading, I’m obliged to let you know that the rest of us are mad as hell that you’re making us look bad.

How can someone possibly advise student journalists and not educate them when they need it? How can you call yourself an adviser and not stand up for your students? What could possibly justify abandoning them?

I cannot think of a single thing a student could do stupid enough to warrant this type of treatment, yet some of you treat your students like stray, unwanted dogs. You’re dropping them off on the side of the road for someone else to rescue. Guess what? The joke’s on you! You’re abandoning them in a place where there are hundreds of caring, compassionate advisers just waiting to take them home and nurse them to health.

Perhaps someday you will find the solace you seek. Keep treating your student journalists like stray dogs and pretty soon they’ll find a new home without you.

If you’re a student who has an absentee adviser and you need help, find someone in your academy to assist you. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, use this blog as a forum to find one of us with the right expertise. Still another option, contact your local newspaper, yearbook representative, press association, or Society of Professional Journalists chapter. They really want to help. I promise, there are a lot of us who care.

We’ve all laughed at them.

We’ve probably been that person as well.

As a professor, I see it every semester – new students walking into the wrong classrooms or standing in the middle of the halls looking perplexed. Even on a university campus as small as ours (Oklahoma City University), new students get lost. They stand, schedules in hand, and wait for someone to offer help or for someone to pass who looks friendly enough to ask.

Students at the University of California in San Diego won’t wait idly for help if they get lost on campus. Instead, they’ll pull out their iPhones and launch their interactive campus map app.

UCSD is the most recent university to make the mobile move with a university-created free app providing an interactive campus map, including where particular classes are located; college sports scores; and the ability to call, text or e-mail the campus community. Officials also are creating a similar Blackberry function. Read more here.

The university isn’t the first to use apps to help students navigate their university lives. The Georgia Institute of Technology, Texas A&M, Ohio State, Duke, and Stanford are among universities using mobile technology to help students. A Japanese university recently launched an application that allows university officials to track student attendance. Read more here.

Given our preference for travel aided by GPS, these developments seem like wonderful ideas. I hope my university soon can offer similar amenities.

Blogging, tweeting, texting, status updating, and e-mailing are just a few of the ways today’s college students write.

But all of this writing doesn’t necessarily mean this generation is composed of better writers.

“Some scholars say this new writing is more engaged and more connected to an audience, and that colleges should encourage students to bring lessons from that writing into the classroom. Others argue that tweets and blog posts enforce bad writing habits and have little relevance to the kind of sustained, focused argument that academic work demands,” according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers” discusses what one professor calls the “age of composition” because of the amount of writing people now perform. The studies addressed in the article show how today’s college students write more outside of class than in a classroom setting. They also show that students enjoy social writing, even though it has not positively impacted writing and grammar test scores. Students describe their social writing as more persistent and meaningful to them than their class writing, according to another professor.

The question becomes how to use this passion for outside writing within the classroom boundaries. In other words, how can educators use students’ desire to express themselves socially to help them academically? Perhaps professors make the writing less relevant to students simply by associating it with academia. IDK, but I do recognize that social media is creating a generation of writers who cannot form proper sentences or spell words correctly.

“Students, please turn off your cell phones and open your Kindles?”

Perhaps, according to a column posted on Inside Higher Ed. The university-related news source reported about how Kindle could be used to save students time and money while helping them learn.

Charles Crowell, an associate professor from Southern Vermont College in Bennington, wrote the piece. He admitted that some university faculty are skeptical (some after failed attempts) about adopting more technology into the classroom. Crowell wrote that Kindle aligns with traditional and contemporary forms of pedagogy.

From the traditional standpoint, Crowell wrote that Kindle is less expensive than traditional textbooks, showing that university officials are sensitive to textbook prices. Textbooks can cost students about $1,000 per academic year. Crowell said some texts he will require next semester are more than 30 percent cheaper on Kindle.

Crowell admitted that some textbooks aren’t yet available on Kindle, but wrote that the benefits of using Kindle will increase as publishers make more books available online. The immediacy of Kindle texts also would allow professors to update their books more reguarly without fear of negative budgetary impact on students, according to Crowell.

Despite its limitations, Crowell thinks Kindle will give faculty and students greater access to more up-to-date materials as a lower cost. Read his entire column, “The Kindle Factor.”

MySpace proved today that even social media are not safe from the current economic decline.

News Corp. officials announced Wednesday the lay off of about 30 percent of the social networking site’s employees. The change brings the company’s domestic staff to about 1,000 employees, according to a press release.

Company officials claim the layoffs will help them minimize a bloated staff and become more innovative and competitive in the market. Perhaps what they actually mean is that they need to get rid of some people so they can attempt to compete with Facebook?

Either way, the layoffs indicate that no form of media, even social ones, are exempt from economic concerns. Could it be that the current market is impacting ALL businesses, including all forms of media? It seems like I’ve read something like that before (“The Paper” adds insight to current newspaper woes).

It’s official Twitter exists.

I recognize that many of you, like me, have been updating your Twitter accounts for months, but the social medium did not exist until in my world until it was recognized by the Associated Press.

Twitter is included in the 2009 edition of The Associated Press Stylebook. The new entry for Twitter lists the social networking Web site as a way to send limited messages. The verb forms are to Twitter or to Tweet. Text, texted and texting also are included as verbs in the book’s latest edition. These are among more than 60 new or updated entries, according to an AP press release.

The new print edition (about $12) and online subscriptions ($25 per year) can be ordered at the AP Bookstore.

It looks like it’s time for us to study up on AP Style. Who knows, perhaps the newest edition will even allow us to spell e-mail like everyone else (email).

What do Sesame Street and good blogs have in common? Copyblogger says fundamentals.

The copywriting blog reports five things the popular learning program can teach you about being a good blogger. An overview of the five, according to the site:

1. Sesame Street tests programming on their target before it airs. You should do the same with your blog.
2. Sesame Street develops characters, which keeps viewers returning for more. You should develop your own online persona on your blog to better relate to your readers.
3. Sesame Street is bound by time, making its content focused and fast paced. You should also keep your blog entries “bite sized” and moving along quickly.
4. Sesame Street focuses on the same fundamentals (ex: letters, numbers, etc.). You also should find your area of expertise and stick with what you know in your blog entries. In other words, have a theme.
5. Sesame Street focuses on rules of repetition, understanding that children need to hear things more than once. You also should get used to repetition on your blog. Any concept worth introducing also is worth repeating.

Read Copyblogger’s entire post “5 Things Sesame Street Can Teach You About Breakthrough Blogging.”

Is it acceptable to adopt someone else’s identity online? The simple (read: obvious) answer is no, but professors and students alike are using the Internet to misrepresent themselves.

The Chronicle of Higher Education posted two stories about such deceptions.

The first, Online Professors Pose as Students to Encourage Real Learning, is about professors using alter egos or “ghost students” in online courses to spy on students and spark discussion among classmates. The professors don’t see a problem with the method, saying it has a “serious purpose.” People rob banks for money to pay debts or take sick family members to the doctor also do so for a “serious purpose,” but that doesn’t make it ok.

Students, of course, feel violated and betrayed when they find out their “classmate” is actually their professor. It’s appalling that professors don’t see a problem with this practice. It’s specifically disturbing because these same educators likely would have a big problem with their students participating in similar deception, such as that discussed in the second article.

UT Austin Humor Magazine Writers Impersonate Institution’s President on Twitter is about a student-run humor magazine creating a Twitter account for the University of Texas-Austin’s president. The students who run the magazine said they hope they don’t have to stop because it’s “way too fun.” The magazine’s editor admits that many people seem to think the account is real. The short article goes on to discuss another university president whose Twitter account also is suspected to be fake.

What happened to professors leading by example? Is this a classic case of “do what I say, not what I do?” Perhaps professors participating in online deception think what they’re doing is different because they are creating fictional people. This distinction is an ethical line in the sand.

It doesn’t care about your beat assignment. It doesn’t discriminate between news delivery platforms. And it certainly doesn’t care about your dinner plans, how busy you are or your mood.

Death is a guaranteed subject of news. People die in every beat, every day. Many of these deaths are newsworthy. The more traumatic the death, the more likely it is that a reporter will be sent to cover it. Even if the people involved in a trauma don’t die, the nature of a traumatic event alone is newsworthy as being something outside of the norm.

This guaranteed coverage is the reason it’s critically important that all journalists (including students, especially students) are training on how to report on trauma while minimizing harm to sources and themselves.

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma focuses on this training. The Dart Center has launched a redesigned Web site packed with tools to assist journalists in covering trauma victims and in protecting themselves while they perform this duty.

While the Dart Center’s first site was suitable, this relaunched effort is amazing. It is THE resource for reporting about trauma.

The site includes a new section on covering school shootings that can only be described as an incredible resource. Jim Killam at Northern Illinois University assisted in compiling the information, which includes a powerful documentary taken in his newsroom after the February 2008 shooting at the school.

It was brave of Jim and the Northern Star staff to share this traumatic experience as a educational tool. Their willingness to post the video speaks to their understanding of the importance of recognizing the potential long-term impact of decisions made during and after traumatic events.

If you haven’t already visited the new Dart Center site, you should. Bookmark it. Register for e-mail updates. Educate yourself on how to cover traumatic events while protecting the emotional health of yourself and others. The media industry and news consumers everywhere are begging for an ethical, sensitive approach to trauma coverage. Become a resource in your newsroom.

Social networking ethics may seem like an oxymoron, but the concept is becoming increasingly important as journalists join the masses using sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Poytner’s Will Sullivan recently posted about The Wall Street Journal’s new social media policy for staffers in “News Organizations Implement New Social Media Ethics Policies.” The policies outline steps reporters should complete before “friending” or “following” potential sources. They also addressed discussing newspaper content and explaining how news was gathered.

Proponents think social network policies protect news organizations’ credibility by maintaining boundaries between journalists and (potential) sources. Opponents view the policies as a missed opportunity to promote content and create collaboration between the media and the public.

As the popularity of social networking continues growing and the sites are increasingly used for marketing and promotions, we are likely to see more company regulation of how these tools are used.

What do you think about potential employer restrictions regarding your networking?