Good Ol' CSU

Last night, at a fashionable bar in downtown Denver, more than 100 former Colorado State University journalism and speech majors gathered to remember their days in Fort Collins.

CSU grads Mitch Jelniker and Jim Benemann couldn't sneak away from their respective newsrooms, of course, and neither could several reporters and columnists from The Denver Post, The Rocky Mountain News or other metro papers, but the professionals who did make it reminded me that CSU (my employer for the past eight years) should be considered the foremost producer of skilled journalistic talent in the state.

Of course, I'm biased now. But years ago, as a resident of and a teacher in the Denver metro area, I carried around this dangerous misperception:

Denver is Buff Country.

That's not to say everyone in the metropolitan area has a deep connection with, or even a loyalty to the University of Colorado, but the amount of media time and space devoted to coverage of Boulder's campus has always exceeded that given to CU's country cousin in Fort Collins.

True, Boulder is much closer to Denver (28 miles compared to 64) than is Fort Collins, so there's some basis for the coverage discrepancy. Yet we're all part of the same television market, Denver's radio stations have a clear signal (not to be confused with Clear Channel, of course) into Northern Colorado, and I see as many copies of The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News in my neighborhood as I do of the local Gannett paper.

Still, news from Fort Collins comes less frequently -- and is covered by fewer journalists -- than news from Boulder, if you live in Denver.

I lived in Denver for six years, and in Littleton for three more. I taught at the state's second-largest high school, Smoky HIll. Maybe because of that difference in coverage, and maybe because of a perceived difference in academic prestige (and Smoky Hill students, moreso than any group I'd ever been around, slavered over perceived academic prestige), most Smoky students contemplating a public education considered CU long before they thought about CSU. And as a journalism instructor, I sent students all over the continent to study journalism, more of them to Columbia, Missouri, than to Fort Collins.

It was a mistake, however, not encouraging more of them to drive that 36 extra miles and park for four years in Fort Collins.

Consider the journalistic and educational opportunities at both CSU and CU:
* 11,000 copies of CSU's 115-year-old student-run daily newspaper are distributed daily around campus and around town, and students at The Rocky Mountain Collegian also produce special content for the paper's Web site. There you'll find podcasts, multi-media packages, surveys, bloggers and all the other output expected of a 21st century, 24/7 news operation, all produced by students.
* CU's student-run newspaper, The Campus Press, no longer publishes a print edition, choosing to be an online-only paper. CU School of Journalism and Mass Communication Dean Paul Voakes' decided to move The Campus Press away from a print edition just this year because it couldn't compete for advertising with the professionally run campus paper, The Colorado Daily.


* CSU's student-run television news outfit, CTV, produces four 15-minute news shows per week, all of which are shown to the Fort Collins community via Comcast Cable channel 11. In addition, the students produce a weekly sports show.
* CU's students produce two news and one sports show per week, all three of which are shown over cable channel 62 in Boulder. They're able to work from the shiny new ATLAS Building studios, a point of pride for students and faculty in Boulder.

* 3,000 copies of CSU's student-run quarterly magazine, College Avenue, are distributed around campus, providing another outlet for student journalists and local advertisers.

* KCSU-FM is a 10,000-watt student-run radio station whose signal reached from Cheyenne to Broomfield, but can't make it to Denver because of a Christian radio station from Colorado Springs that shares its 90.5 frequency. If KCSU could reach Denver, I have no doubt that Westword's "Best of Denver" designation would not have been awarded to KVCU Radio 1190, an AM station that does reach Denver. Listen to both, and decide for yourself:

* Finally, students at CSU have the opportunity to work as public relations interns for the Colorado High School Press Association, housed in our offices at CSU, which allows us to host Journalism Day every October.