If you didn’t like Doug Imbruce’s first venture into student blogging, you won’t probably like this second one either.
What is the OTR Blog Network?
It’s a privately-funded venture actively recruiting bloggers and associate editors via its website currently available in Beta
Written by students, for students, each O.T.R. blog covers a specific college campus. Think of us as your college paper on crack: quicker, funnier, and better-looking (even though we may be missing a few teeth).
[…]
With 100 student writers and counting, O.T.R. is launching this September at 50 colleges nationwide.
And, as Sam Jackson put it today in his webinar about admissions blogging for Higher Ed Experts, the OTR blogs seem to be aiming to (un)cover all the “news” higher ed institutions would rather not see widely available online.
On this new network, student bloggers are paid $500 per semester to post daily (wow, I guess content isn’t worth much lately), and they post anonymously.
Need examples of OTR blog posts?
- University of Michigan
Information Technology Services: The Big Brother You Never Wish You Had - University of Florida
UF to Waste 9 Mil on Boring Fungus
The following 20 institutions can already check out “their” OTR blogs, but more will be rolled out before the start of the semester:
- Boston University
- Claremont
- Cornell
- Harvard
- James Madison University
- NYU
- Penn State
- Purdue
- Stanford
- Syracuse
- Tufts
- UC Berkeley
- University of Florida
- University of Maryland
- University of Michigan
- University of Missouri – Columbia
- University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Wisconsin – madison
- Vanderbilt
- Vassar
So, this is definitely something you need to monitor: another RSS feed to add to your list (feeds are available at the bottom of the OTR blogs on the left)
What do you think?
$500 to blog is more than most colleges are paying their “chosen” bloggers – and since some bloggers do it for no money (hand raised here), I would expect they can get a good number of takers
You’re right, Ken. I’m sure they will get lots of takers.
However, I haven’t heard about any college asking their student bloggers to post every day. Moreover, I’m pretty sure this venture isn’t a non-profit.
When content drives traffic, it should be compensated.
A few years ago, I worked for about.com. Blogs were not around at that time – at least not under this name -, but the network was built around topical niche sites maintained by “guides.” Their compensation included a stipend, but the most popular ones were given a share of the ad revenues. Not a big one, but still.
Hey guys —
Thanks for the post. Have been following your blog, it’s a great resource.
Right now, we’re investing in OTR to create a great platform for talented student writers — there is no advertising on the site to date.
Of course, over time, this will change, and we will absolutely be sharing upside with students if their posts generate ad revenue. I think you’d be hard pressed to find an organization that supports student bloggers more than us!
All the best,
-Doug Imbruce
Thanks for sharing the information, Doug!
Whether they are on- or off-the-record, blogs are pretty powerful, indeed.
$500 sounds like a lot. It’s a great big round number, not $10/hour or per post. I think that’s the attraction. The ones I’ve read (UMich) are a bit sophomoric (to be expected) but also kind of funny. That’s what I think most of the university-sponsored blogs that I’ve read tend to miss, that snarky special sauce that gives blogs their zing.