Mark S. Luckie over at 10,000 words has posted his top ‘best of the best’ student media websites from the US.

The winner for him is the Alligator from Florida U.

The Alligator is hands down the best online student newspaper and rivals the pros in its news coverage and use of multimedia elements. Just listing the stellar components that make up the site warrant its own individual post.

You can’t disagree. It’s a great site. But do read the article and take a look at the six other sites he recommends.

Its a great list and it offers plenty of food for thought. Here in the UK the structures for students journalism can be a whole lot different. At my university for example the student paper, Pluto, is run through the students union. Though students from journalism courses are involved the department maintains a distance from the publication - kind of church and state. So we tend to run smaller newsday style websites as part of class exercises

I’ve been developing the use of CMS‘ withing my courses for the last 4 years and this year all of the second years have been blogging as part of their assignments, the momentum is building for better and better online content.

The structures of courses and the university can often feel restrictive but technology seems to want to jump over them. When I see stuff like the Alligator I get excited and jealous (in a positive way) about what you can achieve.

Roll on next year.