MTV plays tough with college papers
Posted by: Will Sommer in News, Vox Populi, tags: Journalism, MTVUpdate: The site is currently password-protected–I wonder why. Until it’s live again, consider this a preview.
A lot of college papers are about to discover there’s no such thing as a free website. MTVu, which owns the College Publisher paper website system (used by the Independent), has set up its own site to compete with those papers–the Campus Daily Guide.
The site is only showing Ohio State’s now, but there are several others, including one for GW. It has event listings, a Rate My Professors search bar, and a restaurant map. It also links to headlines from the university’s papers that are on College Publisher.
Basically, it’s like the Voice’s publisher used its own paper, sold its own advertising, but published our best headlines. College papers shouldn’t be worried, though–the site doesn’t look that great, and how many of them were making their living on event listings? Still, the Independent better not call this pox down on our house.
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The Campus Daily Guide’s site is password protected for me… any ideas why?
You’re right! I wonder why.
[...] this afternoon, I was alerted by Will Sommer, whose been blogging at Georgetown’s Voice this summer, that the Campus Daily [...]
I just found this link.. interesting controversy surrounding this… Not sure anyone will see this, but for what it’s worth. There aren’t many truly innovative ideas in the college web space and while CDG isn’t a completely new idea, it seems like mtvU had the reach and network to make it successful, where both parties (CMN and MTVU) could have benefited. It’s too bad they weren’t welcomed to the community with open arms. Fast forward almost a year, and now I hear Campus Daily Guides has won a Webby Award, getting tons of traffic, and is really thriving. I can’t imagine what is would have done for College Media Network if there were a tighter integration with individual sites. It’s pretty clear how little you guys (Campus Guide flamers) know about creating a successful business online.