Speaking easy, sort of

Daniel Reimold of Ohio University just spoke about his college's cutting edge news site, SpeakeasyMag.com. Well, it's a news site of sorts. The site provides heavy competition with the college's traditional newspaper, The Post, but I wonder if it should really be considered competition.

SpeakeasyMag.com provides content that students want, and now The Post is struggling for staff members. Can you guess where they've all gone?

Before Reimold's spiel I thought that sites like SpeakeasyMag.com with blogs, multimedia and interactivity could partner with the traditional news sources, but they may just be too different for each other.

I can see it all now: students approach editors of the traditional papers, ask for change, new ways of networking and communicating, but ultimately get rejected. The traditionalists are busy and many can even be considered afraid of change. The events at Ohio University can only prove that this sort of attitude will result in nothing but suffering for those folks.

Reimold talked about the ease and convenience of publishing for students who work for SpeakeasyMag.com: they can complete their work when the mood strikes them or when they can fit it in around their busy schedules. There are no set times for when to write, design or edit: it happens right as the mood strikes (or as the schedule allows).

This has been great for students, but they are suffering socially. Reimold said that students admitted that they wouldn't be able to recognize their colleagues in person, despite the fact that they know their names, beats, e-mail addresses, AIM screennames and writing styles.

From personal experience at the traditional news source here at UT, I know that the camaraderie experienced with other reporters isn't something to miss. It's a little unhealthy to completely nix human interaction, don't you think?

SpeakeasyMag.com doesn't have a common meeting place and only meets once every week or two. It's amazing to think that a site that feeds to a community as specialized and small as a university can have a staff that is, ironically, a little disconnected.

The students communicate constantly using as many media as "humanely" possible, except of course the traditional face-to-face mode. Apparently that's on the outs.