Student Loan Blog : media

California Legislators Act to Block Administrators From Censoring College Publications

Student Loan Girl — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:34:00 GMT

In a move that may soon further the free-speech rights of students writing for the state’s college newspapers, California legislators passed a bill on August 5 that would make it unlawful for school administrators to retaliate against college newspaper advisors, reports the San Francisco Chronicle (“Calif. Bill Protects Student Journalism Teachers,” Aug. 5, 2008).

If signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bill, sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Leland Yee, would prohibit the dismissal, transfer, or disciplining of college or high school journalism teachers who are attempting to protect the free-speech rights of their students.

Journalism teachers have been punished at least 12 times since 2001 as a result of opinion pieces or stories written by student reporters, according to the California Newspaper Publishers Association.

The new bill comes two years after Gov. Schwarzenegger signed anti-censorship legislation into law, granting student reporters free-speech protections comparable to those held by professional journalists. The so-called “Hosty bill” came in response to a 2005 federal ruling by the 7^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that gave university officials the same authority as high school administrators to review and censor student publications.

Although the University of California had originally taken the position that it probably wouldn’t adopt the provisions of the newly passed bill, administrators for the state school system have since reconsidered after further discussions with lawmakers.

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Student Correspondents to Get National Exposure as ABC News Launches College Campus News Bureaus

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:08:00 GMT

In an effort to reach younger viewers, ABC News plans to open five multimedia news bureaus on select college campuses this fall.

Students at Arizona State University, Syracuse University, the University of Florida, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Texas at Austin will have their work featured on various ABC News outlets, including “Good Morning America,” “World News With Charles Gibson,” and “Nightline,” as well as on ABC News Radio and ABCNews.com.

Students selected as bureau chiefs will receive on-site training at ABC News headquarters in New York.

The network hopes its college initiative will provide greater insight into the lives of the prized demographic of 33 million 18-to-25-year-olds living in the United States.

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Wilkes University Puts Freshman Recruits Front and Center and Billboard-Size

Student Loan Girl — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:56:00 GMT

Wilkes University, a small, private school in northeastern Pennsylvania, is using a quirky new in-your-face $120,000 ad campaign to get the attention of today’s media- and marketing-savvy students.

The university is plastering personalized messages on billboards, pizza boxes, gas pumps, and even on MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central to students it wants to make a part of its freshman class, reports Michael Rubinkam in a story by The Associated Press (“Pennsylvania College Woos Students by Putting Them in Ads,” April 30, 2008).

The “trendsetting and forward-thinking” marketing campaign appeals to the “look-at-me generation,” teens comfortable sharing all-things-personal on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, says Nancy Costopulos, chief marketing officer of the American Marketing Association.

The Message: Personalized and Not for the Shy

Wilkes features applicants in its ads who have a “mix of talents and determination” and who live in markets where the university wants to promote itself, says Jack Chielli, the school’s director of marketing. Students must also consent to having their names used.

The ads, writes Rubinkam, are meant “to convey the message that the school gets to know its students personally and pays close attention to their needs.”

To get messages with the right personal touch, 160over90, the Philadelphia marketing firm contracted by Wilkes, interviews participating students and their friends and families, uncovering likes, dislikes, hobbies, nicknames.

The agency uses the information it gleans from these in-depth interviews to design the highly personalized ads that have turned some college-bound seniors into quasi-celebrities in their high schools and communities:

“Lake Lehman senior Greg Heindel: You give your time at the soup kitchen, the firehouse, and your church summer camp. Wilkes University would like to give you something — a top-quality education.”
“Hey Kristen Pecka. Only your closest friends at Central Catholic call you Pecka-lecka-lecka. Choose Wilkes University and add 2,362 more people to that list.”
“Scranton High senior Nicole Pollock: Our goal at Wilkes University is to be as much a mentor as your mother has been. (Now, if we could only make her ravioli.)”

Each ad includes an invitation to “call a Colonel” (the school’s mascot) and provides a phone number that plays a recorded message from a current Wilkes student.

It’s the Thought That Counts

Even if targeted recruits end up choosing another school, says Chielli, he considers the ads successful as long as they continue to grab attention and get other students to think about Wilkes.

But besides drawing more students to apply, the school wants to help make it possible for them to actually attend: Nearly all students receive some form of financial aid apart from student loans to help cover the $25,000 price tag. Wilkes awards $22 million in financial aid each year.

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Amazon and SpiralFrog Looking to Cut Into iTunes' Market Share

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 02:03:00 GMT

Spurred by the monolithic popularity of iTunes and the decline of CD sales, veteran online retailers like Amazon.com, start-ups like SpiralFrog and other companies are clamoring to get into the fray of digital music on demand.

With so much competition, consumers can get great deals and music options, depending on what they’re looking for.

Amazon Betting on Flexibility to Lure Consumers

Amazon’s venture into MP3 sales launched last week with an inventory of nearly 2.3 million songs from the catalogs of major music labels Universal Music Group and EMI Music, as well as thousands of independent labels—and none of these songs are copy-protected with digital rights management technology.

DRM technologies, which have been implemented by the music industry both on CDs and digital files, aim to restrict how consumers can use or distribute their music purchases. In the world of downloadable music, these DRM controls will typically restrict, for example, what kind of hardware (iPod, Zune, etc.) a music file will play on, or how many times a digital file can be burned to a CD.

While the Universal and EMI songs available from Amazon aren’t subject to DRM, they represent only a portion of the labels’ vast music libraries. Nevertheless, Amazon is setting the stage to compete directly with Apple’s iTunes, which has so far dominated the digital music market.

Amazon MP3, as Amazon’s digital-music virtual aisle is called, offers songs for 89 to 99 cents a pop and albums for $5.99 to $9.99 each, a slightly lower price point than iTunes, which sells individual copy-protected songs at a flat rate of 99 cents each and DRM-free songs from EMI for $1.29 apiece. Full album downloads from iTunes typically sell for $9.99.

iTunes uses AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format with proprietary DRM to encode its downloads, which means, unless you spring for the slightly pricier DRM-free songs or if you want something not on the EMI label (which is the only label currently offering DRM-free songs through Apple), your iTunes downloads will only play on an iTunes platform.

So if you have any portable digital player other than an iPod or an operating system that doesn’t support iTunes (Linux, for example), you won’t be able to listen or watch your iTunes downloads. And your iPod won’t play any DRM-enabled files that you purchased outside of iTunes.

Amazon MP3, on the other hand, by providing all DRM-free content, gives you the freedom to play your purchases on most types of portable devices (including the iPod) and through various desktop media players like iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Realizing that flexibility is the convenience factor most music lovers are looking for in their online purchases, Wal-Mart is following in Amazon’s footsteps. The low-cost retailer offers its DRM-free tunes from EMI and Universal Music for 94 cents each and albums for $9.22, which is roughly 27 percent cheaper than iTunes.

Free Songs: Too Good to Be True?

SpiralFrog is taking a different approach, offering its non-DRM downloads free instead of engaging in a price war with online retailers. But the free music comes with a catch: Visitors can download songs at no charge but “have to wait 90 seconds for each track to download, and they must answer questions each month about their buying habits,” explains Joseph Menn in the Los Angeles Times (“SpiralFrog Offers Free Songs—With a Catch,” Sept. 17, 2007).

Songs can be stored on your computer but can’t be burned onto a CD. And if you don’t visit the SpiralFrog website at least once a month to watch more ads, your SpiralFrog music library gets digitally locked, and you won’t be able to access your music. You do have the ability to transfer your music files onto two Windows-compatible portable players or mobile phones at a time—but of course, this excludes the Apple iPod, the most popular digital music player out there.

The SpiralFrog website opened with a selection of 770,000 songs and 3,500 music videos from numerous independent labels and Universal Music. According to eFluxMedia, SpiralFrog has also recently signed a deal with digital label/publisher INgrooves to make INgrooves’ full catalog of audio and video files available, which adds close to 100,000 songs and 2,000 videos to SpiralFrog’s library, including 4,000 Brazilian albums from INgrooves’ iMúsica division (“SpiralFrog Opens for Business,” Sept. 17, 2007).

SpiralFrog makes its money from displaying online advertising. The ad revenue, Menn explains, will be split between SpiralFrog and the labels and music publishers, with the music industry getting more than half.

By offering free media downloads, SpiralFrog wants to appeal to customers tired of paying for their entertainment at iTunes or other pay sites.

“This is a very viable alternative to selling music because clearly that mode is broken,” says Scott Stagg, a SpiralFrog investor, in a quote in Menn’s article. “This is very similar to TV: You get it for free and the advertisers pay the money.”

The record labels, for their part, hope that free sites like SpiralFrog will help keep users away from illegal downloading and unauthorized peer-to-peer share services like LimeWire.

Whether you decide to get your music free, by dealing with a few restrictions, or at the best deal you can find by shopping around, SpiralFrog, Amazon and Wal-Mart are just a handful of the companies competing for you. Rumor has it Google may also get into the melee of online music sales.

Let the games begin.

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