What We Can Learn from UWIRE’s End

As many of you know, I am a former UWIRE employee.  When the company let go its entire staff of student editors, I didn’t say anything publicly, aside from discussions with several professors and editors.

I’ve waited to blog about the issue until now because I don’t believe it’s wise to alienate a past employer or to air your grievances in public. I usually don’t think it’s classy or appropriate, but this situation is a little more complicated than most ...

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After the publication of several articles, including one in The Chronicle of Higher Education, I think it merits an explanation and a few thoughts.

I began working for UWIRE in August 2009, after I was hired as a student editor and occasional freelancer.  Later, my duties grew to include contributing to UWIRE’s College Media Beat blog, primarily staffed by Dan Reimold, who some of you might recognize as the name behind the popular College Media Matters blog.

I took the position because I’m really interested in the future of college media, especially in terms of technology. It also had a second perk: getting paid to aggregate college media content.  Not a bad part-time job for someone just a few months shy of graduation.

The job started off great. I was fortunate to have a great boss, fun virtual co-workers and I felt like I was doing work that mattered. The UWIRE team also encouraged me to pitch my own story ideas and write frequently.  It was a new home for journalism passion I hadn’t tapped into in my own student newsroom.

Aside from a few technical glitches, I never had an idea that anything was wrong.  Then, on Oct. 4, all student editors received an email alerting us that UWIRE operations had been suspended indefinitely.  It was a sudden disclosure, but I was optimistic that the site would return.

I, along with other student editors, was also expecting my first paycheck.  I thought even if the site folded, I’d still be compensated for the more than a month of work I’d put in, often clocking hours before 6 a.m.

For weeks, the UWIRE site, related blogs and Twitter account were without any activity. I assumed in all the shuffle, my paycheck had been lost, so I didn’t complain.

Friends who frequently used UWIRE content at their college newspapers say they never received any indication that the site was down.  It took a frank, e-mailed conversation with the other student editors to discover we’d been stiffed: None of us had been paid for our work.

Another student editor emailed our former employer and asked questions about compensation. We’ve been left with vague answers and no promise that they’ll actually follow through.

Since UWIRE cut ties with the student journalists it previously employed, we’ve tried to be resourceful and work together. However, we’ve gotten few hopeful responses that we’ll ever be paid for our time.  We never signed contracts; we communicated only through email and passed along personal information that way.

In retrospect, I should have been smarter and more skeptical of the situation.

Media, and personal, inquiries to Tom Orr have been met with vague responses:

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

In a recent e-mail message to one student editor who demanded to be paid, Tom Orr, UWIRE’s general manager, referred him to the service’s written statement on its suspension. “Short of just sending out that same exact e-mail every day, there’s really nothing I’m able to update anyone on,” Mr. Orr wrote

I won’t speculate on why UWIRE folded or what happened. I’ll leave that to others who have written on the topic extensively.  I do, however, hope another service emerges to take its place. UWIRE had the potential to be a rich repository for student journalism to be used both by student media and by professional news outlets.

Instead of focusing on the negatives, I want to focus on what kind of opportunity UWIRE’s suspension offers.  I’d like to see a new startup focus on aggregating college media content in specific subject areas. The Texas Tribune, Politico and other news organizations have successfully flirted with this idea in terms of political content.

Recent innovation in college media from the CoPress team, along with the Center for Innovation in College Media proves that there’s an audience that wants to see the college media landscape change. Now, let’s get out there and do it.

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