The shutdown of the Brian's Rumors Daily website earlier this month changed the face of campus media, eliminating a popular source of news and information. While some campus journalists say that the loss of the page has had little impact on their publications, one student is attempting to replace the anonymous forum feature with a website of his own.
Senior Chin Phan recently launched www.tuftstalk.com, an online message board, because he felt that a valuable outlet for student opinion was lost when Rumors Daily shut down. Phan, who lives closer to Boston College than to Tufts, depended on the site for news, and previously worked on the design of Finkelstein's site.
"The Tufts community needed a replacement for Brian's site," Phan said.
Tufts Talk will not report on campus news or gossip, but Chan wants to maintain the discussion forum that existed on Rumors Daily. The degradation of content on that message board, which was seen in several racists and homophobic postings, was part of the reason that Finkelstein closed down the site.
The identity of those who voice opinions on Tufts Talk will remain anonymous, and Phan will maintain a hands-off approach in terms of moderating the forum. But, he has backed up his site with more advanced software so that he can control the messages if things begin to get out of hand.
"I think the main challenge will be to get people to actually visit the site. I know Brian's site took a while to get as popular as it did, and he had the benefit of actual content," said Phan, who plans to keep Tufts Talk running after he graduates.
The open forum was only one facet of Rumors Daily, however, as it provided a tidal wave of both confirmed and unconfirmed news that fed students hungry for campus-related gossip. For this reason, the shutdown of the page had an effect on the way that some students receive their news and, for some publications, the reporting of stories.
In an editorial published the day after Rumors Daily was dismantled, the Daily said that the loss of the page ended competition to get out the news. Finkelstein's page could be updated at any time to publish breaking news and, because he did not do extensive researched, he could sometimes report on stories faster than the newspaper. "News isn't news for long and Daily editors found themselves juggling the desire to beat the Rumors Page while working to produce fair and accurate stories," the editorial read.
However, editors of The Observer feel that little has changed for them, as the weekly publication did not compete with the website for breaking stories.
"Brian's Rumors Daily page may have been a source of student opinion, but was never used as a reliable news source. So far, the disappearance of the page has had no effect on The Observer," Managing Editor Mara Vatz said.
Rumors Daily is not the only online campus news source that has gained popularity in recent years, as Public Relations launched a site called E-news last year, which features articles that inform about Tufts' presence outside campus. While Rumors Daily also performed this function, it displayed links to articles where Tufts was mentioned, while E-News focuses more on Tufts professors, alumni, and students who appear in the news, mostly as sources for media organizations.
E-news producer Pete Sanborn agrees with The Observer that Rumors Daily did not affect his publication.
"E-news was not competing with or pulling information from any [other campus publication]," Sanborn said. If anything, he said, campus publications pull from E-news.
But, he said, "you have to be asleep around here not to know that Brian's Rumors Daily page existed."
