“It’s supposed to be like your college newspaper on crack,” said Sarah Hayden, a Communication senior and Northwestern OTR blogger, describing College OTR. “It’s stories that are either commenting on random stuff on campus or stuff that wouldn’t be in the regular newspaper.”
College OTR (College “On the Record”) is a national blog site written for and by college students, with contributors from at least 48 U.S. colleges and universities. Bloggers have free reign over topics, with posts ranging from legitimate campus news to light-hearted gossip to polls determining the hottest girls on campus.
Strict standards, big paycheck
As icing on the blogging cake, Hayden and fellow blogger Oscar Raymundo, a Weinberg senior, are each paid $1,000 a year for their contributions. OTR pays writers in lump sums by the semester and if bloggers fail to produce the minimum 70 posts in that time, they aren’t paid.
“They’re pretty strict,” Raymundo said. “If you have 69 posts at the end of the semester, they’re not going to pay you.”
Though Hayden and Raymundo said it’s “assumed” that their 70 posts should be spread out somewhat evenly over the semester, it doesn’t always work out that way.
“To get my 70 in by the end of the quarter, I had to do 20 posts in like a day,” said Hayden, who has written for North by Northwestern. “When I was writing so many in a day there just was not much going on around campus. I wrote about a squirrel and the roads being paved … I think when you spread it out there are more interesting things to write about.”
Keeping it witty — and Greek
While some balk at the idea of such seemingly asinine journalism, OTR represents an increasingly popular form, especially for college students. At a site such as OTR, students get their campus news (Hayden and Raymundo do report on fact from time to time) with a little snark and commentary.
Gossip and nonsense definitely drive the Northwestern OTR page, where the bloggers post pot recipes and muse on the prospect of Jerry Springer bringing a “midget lesbian wrangler” to the commencement speech he’ll be giving to Northwestern’s law school. Here, as at many of OTR’s other “Hot Colleges,” the most popular posts are about gossip and Greek life, according to Hayden and Raymundo. The two said they’ve found that the Greek crowd tends to become personally invested in posts about sororities and fraternities.
“Sorority things are really popular, but I hate writing about it because I don’t really care,” Raymundo said. “But the people that read about it, they really care … a lot. Like when I did my best sororities and fraternities … I had no authority whatsoever, I was just like, ‘Tridelt seems like they’d be fun. They’re first.’ And people would comment, make their own lists and rank them, and they spent more time on the comments than I did doing the entire thing.”
Gossip may be a draw for the site, but the bloggers said they avoid anything that falls into “Juicy Campus” territory and avoid posting salacious rumors or naming names when the topic isn’t positive.
“Some tips are inappropriate,” Hayden said. “I’m not going to write about people’s diseases or if they have a child on the way … I try to not ever write anything that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face so I don’t think there’s really a need to be anonymous.”
All in good fun
Though one would think readers would find it hard to seriously invest too much into a site with headlines such as “Spot Dawson” and “Where Can I Eat My Weight in Tater Tots?” that’s not the case, Raymundo said.
“It’s funny when people think this is like a serious journalistic endeavor,” he said. “I don’t do any reporting … I’m just like, ‘I heard Dean Lavine lied in that quoting thing.’ It’s just what I’ve heard. If you take OTR as a serious news source, there’s something seriously wrong with you.”