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A Brief History of Planet Blacksburg

Imagine yourself in a 25-person computer lab on the upper quad of Virginia Tech’s campus on the first day of classes. Your professor walks in, and blasts,

You are all reporters for the Blacksburg Planet and your first story is due at 5:00 p.m. 19 cats are dead…

The first mock of PB

You had to construct your lead perfectly, and make triple-sure that your story had no factual errors or you would recieve a 60% on that paper. This was the reality of Roland Lazenby‘s media writing class.

One day after one of his lectures, I decided that the Internet was a perfect medium for student journalism opportunities. .

The Collegiate Times was a perfectly good newspaper at the time, but it was difficult to get published. Lazenby’s students were writing real news articles, and they weren’t making it past his briefcase. It is basically free to use the web as a publishing medium, so I thought that people might want to read these stories.

Professor Lazenby liked the idea, and we ran with it. We asked the university to let us use the alias planet.org.vt.edu. The only requirements for a student organization at Virginia Tech are a student and an advisor, so in the Fall of 2005, Planet Blacksburg was born.

Another old shot of PB's home page

The site looked unprofessional and the layout was atrocious, but the possibilities were endless. We could use this evolving, interactive portal to publish assignments, and let the whole world explore our attempt at accurate news gathering.

We recruited students, and we published their work. For one long semester, Lazenby edited, and I tried to find time to organize our stories somewhere on the website. There were a few AP style errors, but Google was indexing our content, and traffic was rising. Those few months wore us both out, but it was well worth it.

One of the greatest milestones for Planet Blacksburg was the adaptation of video. Nikki Eley published some of the best video content from the very start. Now we have videos that make it on the Sports Illustrated Blog:

Today, we have over 800 articles published, and more rich media than any other local news organization besides the Roanoke Times. Neal Turnage has put countless hours in to really define our sports section. Over the past two years, over 100 students have been a part of our group, and we hope to attract more attention on May 3rd, when we will co-host a concert at the new Awful Arthurs in Kent Square with BigLickU.

The best part of Planet Blacksburg is the student participation. Anyone can build a student media operation from the ground up with the right information, and a little motivation. Getting students published was my goal from the beginning, and I believe that is still the aim of PB. Kevin Cupp has taken over as webmaster, and I am confident that he can carry our mission forward with exciting innovative features, and the ability to syndicate our stories easier.

PB Today

Everyone else has made a huge impact, and we will continue to grow with more and more students getting involved all the time. Please let us know what you think of our site, and don’t hesitate to contact us with suggestions, comments, and any general feedback. Planet Blacksburg is for you.

Photo page revamped

Brian Sewell has redone the photo page.

This entry was written by Andrew Mager, posted on April 13, 2007 at 9:47 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.
  • http://lakernoise.com Roland Lazenby

    This is great, Andy.
    Just to add a few key things.
    Between your stewardship and the arrival of Kevin Cupp, Neal Turnage has done a grinding amount of work to fill the gap to get dozens of stories edited and posted.
    Also another history note: The first pages created a print version of my old mythical Blacksburg Planet, and I told you, “No, the future is all about convergence. Blacksburg Planet is a newspaper name. Planetblacksburg will be a website/convergence name.” So you reworked the original.
    And the third key thing, you haven’t really stressed (and you wouldn’t) the ungodly number of hours you have put into this thing since September 2005. Your hard work and leadership has encouraged the other fine staff members of PB to log long hours keeping the site right there on the cutting edge for our community.
    The figure that documents the dedication of an array of student editors and writers is 0.
    Yes, a big fat zero.
    That’s basically the total budget (I’ve spent some out-of-pocket money on domain registration and server spaced; even that you found a way to cover eventually), the total budget of 21 months of operations for planetblacksburg.com.
    I also have to say the other big factor that helped drive the thing was the early support from Virginia Tech’s Department of Communication in the form of independent study credit for student editors working on the project.
    Cheers to all who have lifted a hammer and helped build planetblacksburg.com.
    Long may she run.
    Roland
    P.S. I think it’s time this year to initiate the PBJ awards. Planet Blacksburg Journalism awards. We need to get student management together to work on the specifics and initiate an awards process.

  • http://lakernoise.com Roland Lazenby

    This is great, Andy.
    Just to add a few key things.
    Between your stewardship and the arrival of Kevin Cupp, Neal Turnage has done a grinding amount of work to fill the gap to get dozens of stories edited and posted.
    Also another history note: The first pages created a print version of my old mythical Blacksburg Planet, and I told you, “No, the future is all about convergence. Blacksburg Planet is a newspaper name. Planetblacksburg will be a website/convergence name.” So you reworked the original.
    And the third key thing, you haven’t really stressed (and you wouldn’t) the ungodly number of hours you have put into this thing since September 2005. Your hard work and leadership has encouraged the other fine staff members of PB to log long hours keeping the site right there on the cutting edge for our community.
    The figure that documents the dedication of an array of student editors and writers is 0.
    Yes, a big fat zero.
    That’s basically the total budget (I’ve spent some out-of-pocket money on domain registration and server spaced; even that you found a way to cover eventually), the total budget of 21 months of operations for planetblacksburg.com.
    I also have to say the other big factor that helped drive the thing was the early support from Virginia Tech’s Department of Communication in the form of independent study credit for student editors working on the project.
    Cheers to all who have lifted a hammer and helped build planetblacksburg.com.
    Long may she run.
    Roland
    P.S. I think it’s time this year to initiate the PBJ awards. Planet Blacksburg Journalism awards. We need to get student management together to work on the specifics and initiate an awards process.

  • http://nlcf.net Dave

    Is PB WP? If so, incredible adaptation. If not, incredible creation. Did you do all the styling for it? Pixel perfect. How do I buy stock in PB as it will no doubt supplant CT?

  • http://nlcf.net Dave

    Is PB WP? If so, incredible adaptation. If not, incredible creation. Did you do all the styling for it? Pixel perfect. How do I buy stock in PB as it will no doubt supplant CT?

  • https://andrewmager.com Andrew Mager

    Hah, I always wanted to put it on WordPress. It started out completely static. Now it runs on Movable Type. Kevin Cupp did the redesign… he is a genius.

  • https://andrewmager.com Andrew Mager

    Hah, I always wanted to put it on WordPress. It started out completely static. Now it runs on Movable Type. Kevin Cupp did the redesign… he is a genius.

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