When UWire surprisingly went silent six months ago, it sent shock waves through the college media community. The content-sharing site served as the go-to place for student journalism from around the country. Without UWire, there wasn't exactly a college news wire that people could trust. That's why UWire's decision to come back has people talking.
UWire will be back up and running sometime later this week or early next week, the college journalism blog College Media Matters reports. As pointed out in the CMM blog post, UWire hit a snag in its relationship with Fox, prompting the unexpected and abrupt shutdown. UWire's Tom Orr acknowledged to CMM that the sudden closing of UWire alienated a lot of student journalists, but Orr hopes that the same journalists will give UWire a chance to redeem itself.
"I completely understand why people feel burned by it," Orr tells CMM. "I would absolutely feel that way if I was in their position. We are very, very sorry for the way everything happened last fall .... There were significant elements that were out of our control. We got quite a shock, and that, in turn, caused some real serious ripples that affected our members and a lot of people's livelihoods. We really are intent on making this right and restoring UWire's place as the leader in this field."
In the time since UWire's shutdown, two major competitors popped up: the Huffington Post and College News Network. Both have had success in the early going, but UWire doesn't seem worried about the challenge. Expect the college news aggregation fight to heat up soon.
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