Month: January 2008

Monclair State newspaper funding cut by SGA

The Student Government Association at Montclair State University in New Jersey has cut the paper’s funding. As a result, they are no longer able to publish:

Montclarion Presses Stopped by Student Government

Here is the paper’s editorial.

The New York Times picked up the story yesterday:

Student Dispute Threatens Montclair State’s Paper

Here are the first three paragraphs of the Times’ article, which give a good overview:

In a rancorous dispute that has pitted student journalists against student government, the editors of Montclair State University’s weekly newspaper were forced to stop publishing last week after the student body president froze the paper’s financing.

The editors of the paper, The Montclarion, claim that the president, Ron Chicken, improperly used his authority, cutting off the newspaper’s funds to silence criticism of the student government.

The student body president, however, told the Montclarion’s editors that they had violated the by-laws of the student government association by hiring their own lawyer.

The Society of Professional Journalists (full disclosure: I’m a member) posted on its site a letter to the Montclarion editor, excerpts of which were just to members sent via e-mail:

Letter of support to Montclarion editors and staff

Weigh in: What are your thoughts on the situation? Has this happened/could this happen at your university?

How to…use FeedBurner

I have been asked to do a tutorial post for my online journalism classmates on how to use FeedBurner, so here it goes!

Step 1 – Register
Go to FeedBurner.com and click “Register” in the upper righthand corner to create an account:


Step 2 – Add
Enter your blog address or an existing feed. With Blogger (the platform we’re using for class), find your feed by clicking this link at the bottom your blog posts that says: “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom).”


Step 3 – Burn
Enter a title for your feed and complete the feed address, such as with your name or blog title:


Step 4 – Integrate
Integrate your new feed with your blog. For those in class, look at the Blogger section and select “Redirect your Blogger feed to your FeedBurner feed.”


Step 5 – Publicize
To publish a chicklet, click the “Publicize” tab in your FeedBurner account. Select the one you would like to add. For class, I would recommend including the default RSS feed icon and then adding Google and Yahoo later.


Once you select the chicklet you want, scroll to the bottom where it says “Use as a widget in” and click the drop-down menu to select the type of blog you use. For class, select Blogger and confirm it as a new page element. Another option is to copy the provided code into your blog.

Other information

  • “Analyze” is the most useful tab in your FeedBurner account. Explore the contents to see essentially any bit of information you could possibly imagine regarding your feed, such as how many subscribers you have and how many hits your feed has.
  • FeedBurner Help Center’s explanation. (added Jan. 31, 11:39 a.m.)

Questions: Please feel free to ask questions by commenting.

Weigh in: What did you think of this tutorial? It’s my first, so be brutal.

Dave Barry for president! (Yes, of the United States)

Dave is back and running again! He had been on the sidelines for a little while, covering the New Hampshire primaries and doing a presidential Q&A online, but now he’s in the thick of it for real.

Check out the campaign video and be sure stop over at Dave’s blog.

Dave Barry ’08
“It’s Time We Demanded Less”

UPDATE: Another video related to Dave’s run: