Journalism Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 486 journalism schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 463 journalism schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 96% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 66.7% of the 486 journalism schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 11.9% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.4%), black (5.3%) and yellow (4.1%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on journalism school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest journalism schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%
3. University of Central Florida: white 46% and black 1.6%

Font

The largest number, nearly 41.4%, of journalism school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on journalism school websites include Verdana (21.6%) and Helvetica (8.8%).

The largest journalism school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Arizona State University: Arial
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica
3. University of Central Florida: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 351 journalism schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 565 YouTube channel subscribers. The journalism schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 113,180 subscribers
2. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
3. Columbia University in the City of New York: 4,146 subscribers

Exactly 405 journalism schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,492 Twitter account followers. The journalism schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
2. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers
3. Texas A & M University - College Station: 19,518 followers

Web Metrics

Although all journalism schools have websites, only about 18% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 82.7% of journalism school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The journalism schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links
2. Northwest Missouri State University: 6,291 broken links
3. Doane College - Crete: 4,754 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on journalism school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The journalism school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Foothill College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Gavilan College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The journalism school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. Eckerd College: 14 HTML validation errors; 558 CSS validation errors
2. Palm Beach Atlantic University - West Palm Beach: 354 HTML validation errors; 155 CSS validation errors
3. University of Nebraska - Lincoln: 0 HTML validation errors; 420 CSS validation errors