College television newscasts serve as training grounds for future broadcast journalists and should help students understand emerging trends in the field, such as social media use and developing web and multimedia skills. Increasingly, television news websites need to connect with technologically diverse audiences, and the industry is under increasing legal pressure to make its websites more accessible, particularly in terms of captioning. In addition, with smartphone use becoming almost ubiquitous and people turning to their smartphones as news sources, the industry needs to make sure their websites are responsive to mobile devices. This study examined award-winning college television news websites to see if they are preparing students for the realities of communicating with technologically diverse audiences by examining website mobile readiness and accessibility, including captioning adoption. While most sites were usable on mobile devices, about a quarter did not offer captioning, and there were wide spread accessibility problems.
BickhamS. B. (2008). Toward a free collegiate press: An analysis of influences that can lead to censorship at college newspapers (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). The University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg.
7.
BoyleK.ZuegnerC. (2015). Big tweets on campus: College newspapers’ use of twitter. Teaching Journalism & Mass Communication, 5, 12–21.
BurchA.CozmaR. (2016). Student election stories use more diverse news sources. Newspaper Research Journal, 37, 235–248.
10.
ChyiH. I. (2012, April). Are “Digital Natives” dropping print newspapers? A national survey of college media advisors. Paper presented at the Thirteenth International Symposium on Online Journalism, Austin, TX.
11.
CozmaR.HallaqT. (2018, April). All the news that’s fit to tweet: Student college TV stations’ uses of Twitter. Paper presented at the Broadcast Education Association, Las Vegas, NV.
12.
DiddiA.LaRoseR. (2006). Getting hooked on news: Uses and gratifications and the formation of news habits among college students in an internet environment. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 50, 193–210.
13.
EkdaleB.SingerJ. B.TullyM.HarmsenS. (2015). Making change: Diffusion of technological, relational, and cultural innovation in the newsroom. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 92, 938–958.
14.
EkstrandV. S. (2017). Democratic governance, self-fulfillment and disability: Web accessibility under the Americans with disabilities act and the first amendment. Communication Law and Policy, 22, 427–457. doi:10.1080/10811680.2017.1364918
FilakV. F. (2012). A concurrent examination of self-versus-others perceptual bias and the willingness to self-censor: A study of college newspaper editors and advisers. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 89, 299–314.
17.
FilakV. F.ReinardyS. (2011). Editor Toast: A study of burnout and job satisfaction among college newspaper editors. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 66, 243–256.
18.
FreelonD. (2013). ReCal OIR: Ordinal, interval, and ratio intercoder reliability as a web service. International Journal of Internet Science, 8, 10–16.
19.
GarrisonB. (2001a). Computer-assisted reporting near complete adoption. Newspaper Research Journal, 22, 65–79.
20.
GarrisonB. (2001b). Diffusion of online information technologies in newspaper newsrooms. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 2, 221–239.
21.
GiannoumiG. A.LandM.BeyeneW. M.BlanckP. (2017). Web accessibility and technology protection measures: Harmonizing the rights of persons with cognitive disabilities and copyright protections on the web. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 11(1), article 5.
HuffmanS.TuggleC. A.RosengardD. S. (2004). How campus media cover sports: The gender-equity issue, one generation later. Mass Communication & Society, 7, 475–489.
27.
IsmailovaR.InalY. (2017). Web site accessibility and quality in use: A comparative study of government web sites in Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkey. Universal Access in the Information Society, 16, 987–996. doi:10.1007/s10209-016-0490-z
28.
JaegerP. T. (2006). Assessing section 508 compliance on federal e-government web sites: A multi-method, user-centered evaluation of accessibility for persons with disabilities. Government Information Quarterly, 23, 169–190. doi:10.1016/J.GIQ.2006.03.002
Lawson-BordersG. (2003). Integrating new media and old media: Seven observations of convergence as a strategy for best practices in media organizations. International Journal on Media Management, 5, 91–99.
ManciniC.ZeddaM.BarbaroA. (2005). Health information in Italian public health websites: Moving from inaccessibility to accessibility. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 22, 276–285. doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2005.00602.x
34.
MarcotteE. (2017). Responsive web design: A book apart n° 4. Paris. France: Éditions Eyrolles.
35.
National Association of the Deaf et al. v. Netflix, Inc., 896 F.Supp.2d 196 (D. Mass. 2012).
36.
NeuendorfK. A. (2002). The content analysis guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Pew Research Center. (2018, February5). Demographics of mobile device ownership and adoption in the United States. Author. Retrieved fromhttp://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/
41.
PritchardA. D. (2013). Come one, come all into the newsroom? Student publications after Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 90, 287–307.
42.
RiggsW. (2017). Mobile responsive websites and local planning departments in the US: Opportunities for the future. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 44, 947–963. doi:10.1177/0265813516656375
43.
RogersE. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.
44.
RossA. A. (2017). “If nobody gives a shit, is it really news?” Changing standards of news production in a learning newsroom. Digital Journalism, 5, 82–99.
45.
ShiverB. N.WolfeR. J. (2015, October). Evaluating alternatives for better deaf accessibility to selected web-based multimedia. In Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (pp. 231–238). New York, NY: ACM.
46.
SingerJ. B. (2004). Strange bedfellows? The diffusion of convergence in four news organizations. Journalism Studies, 5, 3–18.
47.
Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, Title II. Pub. L. 111-260 § 202 (2010)
WengerD. H.OwensL. C.CainJ. (2018). Help wanted: Realigning journalism education to meet the needs of top US news companies. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 73, 18–36.
54.
WestlundO. (2013). Mobile news. Digital Journalism, 1, 6–26. doi:10.1080/21670811.2012.740273
55.
YoungbloodN. E.MackiewiczJ. (2012). A usability analysis of municipal government website home pages in Alabama. Government Information Quarterly, 29, 582–588. doi:10.1016/J.GIQ.2011.12.010
56.
YoungbloodN. E.TirumalaL. N.GalvezR. A. (2017). Accessible media: The need to prepare students for creating accessible content. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 73, 334–345.
57.
YoungbloodS. A.YoungbloodN. E. (2018). Usability, content, and connections: How county-level Alabama emergency management agencies communicate with their online public. Government Information Quarterly, 35, 50–60. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2017.12.001
58.
ZdenekS. (2015). Reading sounds: Closed-captioned media and popular culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
