By Hannah Kirkpatrick
St. Bonaventure University journalism professors Rich and Anne Lee have always believed in giving their students a broader audience to provide real-world experience and added level of responsibility.
“In most classes, two people read what you write: you and your professor. Here, potentially hundreds or more people can read it. That's good and it's bad. It means if you make a mistake, somebody is going to call you out on it,” said Rich Lee.
But how best to provide that experience for the rural campus in western New York? And here is where TAPinto – a national for-profit chain of news sites entered the picture.
In 2016, the Lee’s launched the Greater Olean TAPInto franchise which makes the students stories more accessible to the local community. Although there are now 96 TAPinto franchises in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida, the St. Bonaventure remains the only College/University run site.
TAPInto is a way to make creating a local news outlet more accessible, especially in college and university towns amid news deserts, according to Mike Shapiro, TAPInto CEO and founder.
“We handle all the technology and all the support and all the new features and take that off their table, so to speak, so they can concentrate on the journalism,” said Shapiro.
Stories written by students for TAPInto Greater Olean might be picked up and published on other websites in the network.
“We treat them as professionals,” said Rich Lee. “Being part of the TAPInto network, there's opportunities they can get. If they have a story that may be of interest to some of the other TAPinto sites, they may get picked up by some of them.”
Students write stories on anything from local elections to basketball tournaments.
“Right after we started, we had a story about Bruce Springsteen. He had a connection with one of our graduates from Niagara Falls. That got picked up by most of the New Jersey sites,” said Rich Lee.
Other franchises in the TAPInto network, usually started by individuals, make their money from advertising. St. Bonaventure has not gone that direction, yet.
“We haven't made much money from advertising because we don't have the time,” said Anne Lee. “It would be a good thing. I think probably a lot more colleges would buy into it if we could prove that there was money to be made.”
Shapiro believes that bringing in business students to coordinate the advertising side of the franchise could offer benefits beyond extra funding.
“To me, that would be the ideal model, because it brings the whole student body together and shows them a real world experience of running a local news site,” said Shapiro.
Collaborations with universities like St. Bonaventure is another way for TAPInto to continue increasing the availability of local news, Shapiro said.
“If we're going to fill the news deserts throughout the country, there needs to be flexibility and there needs to be an understanding that there's not a one size fits all for a given community,” Shapiro said.
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