KELSEY WEISS
STAFF WRITER
The 5300 is a website developed by the students in Professor Matthew Cicci’s Writing for the Media course. The site and its social media hope to keep Alma students informed and entertained. Cicci also acts as faculty advisor to the Almanian.
The 5300 may be an interesting name to some, but it does have a deeper meaning behind it.
“One of our writers actually looked it up and found out that there is currently 5,300 colleges in the United States, hence the name,” said Alyssa Gall (‘21), one of the copy editors for The 5300.
“The 5300 is a blog and media outlet made by college students, for college students to talk about what is happening on our campus,” said Christopher Nouhan (‘20), a member of the production team.
This project was originally intended to be a broad site that every college student could use. “The website stemmed from trying to provide for our target audience of other college students,” said Sydney Bossidis (‘20), an arts and theatre section contributor.
The class then began to zero in on their audience. “However, we saw it as a more relevant and prevalent audience to focus it on folks in Alma,” said Nouhan.
The 5300 spans social media along with having their very own website, the5300.com. “My focus is teaching students how to write for news agencies now and adapting to the changing landscape of media production,” said Cicci.
The form of journalism has changed. As a society, we have gone from newspapers to online sources for our media and what is happening in the world around us. That is what The 5300 is trying to adapt to.
“We are trying to write a more accessible and relatable content to the same tone as Buzzfeed,” said Bossidis. “It is less reporting and more blogging.” This means that they are making their articles more fun while also giving you the scoop.
The class is broken up into teams which each have a specific area to focus on. The teams include the editing and copy editing team, the Greek life and student life group who focus on the happenings of the Alma campus, arts and theatre, the sports faction, social media and producers, who make and perfect videos and media as a whole.
There are about four people on each team. Each person brings previous experience to their part of the class and is important to the work that is being done. Even if someone is not on a specific team, they are still able to write and submit content for the website.
Just like The Almanian, The 5300 focuses on the happenings on campus, what people are talking about and what they want to see happen on campus.
“We just did a piece on the clapping in Saga along with looking into whether people preferred Joe’s or Saga and what the big differences were between the two,” said Gall. Unlike The Almanian, The 5300 is a class that is more based on learning the way to write for the media rather than having a job writing for the media.
“My hope is that I can help all writers adapt to the new form of media coverage,” said Cicci. “However, in a class, it is much easier to shape.”
“Writing For The Media is a class that gives someone real life experience with what people are talking about on a daily basis and possibly gets them ready for their future career,” said Nouhan.
