For College Newspapers, Prepackaged Online Versions Are Yesterday's News

Approximately 600 student newspapers use College Publisher, a content-management system owned by College Media Network. (Many other campus newspapers have a very limited online presence.) The service offers Web-page templates and around-the-clock technical support, a draw for student journalists with limited resources.

However, the uniformity of the templates limits what journalists can do on the Web."It's been detrimental to their ability to innovate online," said Daniel Bachhuber, founder of the now-defunct CoPress, a company that also offered hosting and resources to student newspapers. It closed in March for financial reasons.