About
College Columns collected links to well-written, interesting articles from college newspapers. Each one came with a short description, so you could get a sense of the piece and decide whether to read it.
The idea was to give student writers a wider audience, and a little national credibility as journalists, than their campus paper could on its own.
What we were working on
- Building a network of campuses
- Developing an organization for entries
- Working on staff for updates
- Deciding when it would launch
Volumes
- Volume 1June 8, 2009
- Volume 3July 6, 2009
Schools on the early list: Fairfield University and the University of San Francisco. Volume 2 was not captured by the web archive.
Going grey
The site used dark shades on purpose, borrowing from Blackle, to use a little less screen power. Being online at all was part of the point too: fewer printed articles, and great student writing reaching a wider audience.
How it ran
It started as a ground-floor project looking for people who wanted to make a difference in media, with contributors earning recommendations for helping in the early days. The project wound down after 2009, and this page keeps the record of it.