The Rocky Mountain Collegian at Colorado State University has risen three spots in The Princeton Review’s annual ranking of the nation’s best college newspapers, from No. 9 last year to No. 6.

CSU is the highest ranked public university on the list, and the largest institution in the top six. Ranked higher than the Collegian are the college newspapers at Bowdoin College in Maine, Ithaca College in New York, Hillsdale College in Michigan and Rice University in Houston. Syracuse University’s paper was ranked No. 1.

The jump in rank comes on the heels of a host of other recent honors for the Rocky Mountain Student Media Corporation. Last spring, KCSU won two Pinnacle Awards from the College Media Association and got first and third place for Best Radio Spot Ad from the College Media Business and Advertising Managers. The campus radio station and Collegian TV both garnered first place Future Broadcasters Awards from the Colorado Broadcasters Association. Rocky Mountain Student Media also brought home second place in the Best Live Production Video category from College Broadcasters, Inc.
Last fall, in the College Media Association Awards, the Collegian received six awards, KCSU three and CTV four.

Online presence grows

Over the past year, Rocky Mountain Student Media has had more than 1.2 million page views combined on the Collegian.com, KCSUfm.com and its corporate web pages. Collegian TV produced 104 original shows in 2018-19, and the station broadcast programming 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on Comcast Channel 11 and streamed on YouTube and the CTV webpage. CTV also began streaming its live shows on Facebook.

On YouTube, CTV passed 1,000 subscribers, and had nearly 99,000 views. In addition, CTV produced shorter video content for Youtube, including pre-, mid-, and post-game reports for many CSU sports, both Division I and club. The station produced a total of 762 videos.

KCSU had a record number of DJs broadcasting on 90.5 FM and creating podcasts last year — more than 60. Nielsen ratings showed that the station had 5,500 unique radio listeners per month.

Of CSU’s 2019 graduates, 129 participated in RMSMC at some point in their college career, and more than 300 students worked for RMSMC in some capacity in 2018-19.

The 2018-19 academic year was the last year of publishing the print edition of the Collegian four (and sometimes five) days a week. This academic year, the newspaper has shifted to a Monday/Thursday schedule to allow for more time to focus on digital publishing and skill-building among the staff.