This is why (college) old media is failing

If the post confuses you, I'll try and clear a few things up. This paper is still giving stipends to editors and senior reporters. They can't take even a small cut in their stipends to provide a modest stipend for someone whose skills are exceedingly more marketable than the ability to write in AP-style.

<i>Applicants need a working knowledge of ASP/ASP.net, MySQL, Movable Type, HTML/CSS and general web server experience. Knowledge of JavaScript, LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) servers, iPhone development knowledge, Adobe Flash/Flex is a plus. </i><p>I guess this is what PG meant when he said:<p><i>The pointy-haired boss has no idea how this software has to work, and can't tell one programming language from another, and yet he knows what language you should write it in.</i>

Most college newspapers actually outsource the content management and hosting for their websites to a company called College Publisher (owned by Viacom).<p>College Publisher takes 100% of the advertising revenue in exchange for hosting the site and providing a CMS for "free". It's a small but lucrative niche for Viacom.<p>By not giving up 100% of its online advertising revenue, this paper is actually well ahead of its peers.

My University paper did something like this. They were looking for someone to do some website design and maintenance for them at $300 a semester, and I offered to help. Not because eleven dollars a week rewards the effort I would put in, but because I felt like helping my University fix their embarrassing web presence.<p>In the end, despite the fact that I had worked with them before, and came recommended by the CS department, they demanded a full resume and a burned CD with examples of previous work before they would even talk to me! They ended up with an English major who "had experience with Dreamweaver", and clearly didn't mind jumping through hoops for negligible reward :P

I used to be the online manager at my college newspaper (<a href="http://mndaily.com" rel="nofollow">http://mndaily.com</a>).<p>Working in the newspaper publishing environment is challenging for programmers. For instance, while online advertising made up a sizeable portion of the paper's revenue many of the salepeople at the paper had no idea where the ad spots were on the site or even what a CPM is.<p>Also challenging was working with different departments that had different workflows. We had to support the editorial process, the sales process, the hiring process, etc.<p>But wanting to get programmers for nothing is crazy. The programmers at the Daily were among the highest paid employees (only editor-in-chief, controller, and president were paid more than the online staff I believe) there and it would still takes months to fill a position with someone who had any competence (knew HTML and could write something more than Hello World in PHP).<p>While I know times are tough this is pretty disgraceful. College newspapers offer a good opportunity to get training in programming and allow prospective coders to start working with teams and real projects. But doing it for no pay really makes it a non-option.

Just bought a Powerball ticket. $114M woohoo!<p>My odds of winning and her odds of finding someone are about the same.

This ad is frighteningly similar to the ones out there in the real world at all but the most progressive papers, only difference is they pay a <i>little</i> bit better.

The collegian's web site runs on a windows server. lol'in at LAMP.

At my student paper in the UK we are all unpaid volunteers. Is it any different in the States?

There are more than 600 college newspapers in the US. This means that an opportunity exists in these hyper-local markets to also report community news and, perhaps, create something that may "save" (I know that's the wrong word) the newspaper publishing industry.

I'm surprised they didn't want a minimum 10 years experience in iphone app dev experience.

I don't see how this is different from the real world. I see lots of ads for "Unpaid Internships" that want extensive knowledge of the field and expect you to already have the skills and experience the internship is supposed to teach you.

Why the heck is it still so hard to make iPhone applications? You'd think some smart HNer would realize that every publication on the planet wants to have its own iPhone app. But few of them can afford to pay someone $10k to build one. I bet a lot of them could afford to pay $500 bucks though...

Not enough vision here... its a potentially great way to get free press and ad space for your project while learning a bit about all the newspapers that will be desparate for any programmer with knowledge of a dying industry can be saved.

And they allowed commenting... big mistake.