A snapshot of California community college journalism

Student publication web sites and more emphasis on them were major highlights of California community college journalism programs during the 2006-07 school year. It was also a good year for programs to upgrade the equipment they use to produce student publications.

These were among the results of JACC’s 2007 Snapshot Survey of programs.

The online survey’s 48 questions examined a multitude of aspects of community college journalism programs. Fifty-seven colleges, or approximately 75 percent of the 76 community colleges with a newspaper or journalism program, participated in the survey, creating a fairly accurate snapshot of the state of the programs in the state.

JACC’s Snapshot Survey attempts to capture a snapshot of the programs around the state at the time of the survey and can be measured against earlier snapshots taken during the 1995-96, 1997-98, 1998-99, 2000-01 and 2001-02 school years. JACC attempted a survey in 2003-04 but did not get enough participation from schools to be meaningful. In addition, Toni (Allen) Albertson, now at Mt. San Antonio College, did a similar survey of California community college programs as part of a masters project in the early 2000s. Summaries of those surveys, as well as this one, are available on the JACC web site at www.jacconline.org.

The 2007 survey was broken into five sections: General information about the journalism program, information about the student newspaper, information about the online student publication, information about non-newspaper classes, and information about the college magazine.