College newspapers: Good ideas gone bad

Ever have one of those ideas that seem to be absolutely brilliant at the time, but once it's all said and done, turns out to be one big flop?

Well this week, I examined some of these good attempts that didn't exactly turn out so hot or clearly have not been used properly.

The Daily Texan, which was critiqued last week, makes headlines again as the sports staff setup a live football chat earlier today. They used the best of the best live chatting software in "Cover It Live" and even integrated Twitter and polls.

Austin Talbert hosted the chat before football writer David Henry joined in to take and answer questions (kind of like how boston.com fills in for Tony Massarotti who always seems to get stuck in traffic on I-93).

It was the Daily Texan's first ever live chat.

Great idea? Yes. So what went wrong?

On Cover It Live, the person running the blog (it's really used for live blogging) has full control of what's published and what's not published. They can received 100s of comments, but can choose to only publish half of them. They can even block users if they wish.

This is how the "first ever" live chat started off:

1:56	David R. Henry:  Okay we're going to do this until 2:50. We'll start with the first question.

1:56	[Comment From Grendel] I hate the Daily TEXAN. I bet 80% of readers here would agree. So, shoud Childs starts?

What an amazing way to attract more readers. Maybe I shouldn't follow them after all?

To check out the entire replay, click here.

Next comes from the Quinnipiac Chronicle at Quinnipiac University. 

A lot of the top notch college newspapers are setting up Twitter accounts, which is a great idea using this new grade of technology and communication. Twitter is great to follow tons of news pages with not only up-to-date content, but as well as video links, as well as Twitpics. In this case the QU didn't use Twitpic, but UberTwitter an application for blackberries. 

On its Twitter page, the QU Chronicle posted up a picture of the latest construction going on campus. Apparently the construction is occurring right outside of its office window.

Fair enough, but just look at the picture.

Would it have killed them to at least do away with the blinds? No quality newspaper would run this photo with the obstruction of office blinds. Stupid, but true. It was a good attempt, but the picture is awful.

And sticking with Twitter, most college newspapers know how to properly use it, but The Hilltop Online of Howard University, clearly does not know how to use Twitter to its greatest potential.

Currently on its homepage there isn't a single link to one story, photo, video, or anything? The only link they managed to put on there was the direct link to its main web page and it isn't even shortened.

One "tweet" reads:

"To read the campus columnists' words, go to www.hilltoponline.com and click on 'The Voices on Campus' tab at the top. Read up!"

Did they actually just give step by step instructions using Twitter to find a link? Why didn't they just insert the link using TweetDeck like normal people? That's the whole point of using Twitter.

Amazing stuff lets see if they catch on.