What is the Hard News Cafe?

We are the news and information site produced by journalism & communication department students of Utah State University.

We cover events on the USU campus, in the surrounding community of Logan and in towns throughout Cache Valley.

Students contribute to this site in a variety of ways:

• As reporters and columnists, writing for print journalism classes.

• As photographers, from photojournalism classes and as free-lancers.

• As TV producers and staff, posting digital video newscasts from broadcasting classes.

• As staff of the Hard News Cafe class, aka "KCOW," JCOM 4100.

• As Web masters.

• As discussants in a "Conference on the Web" forum -- accessed through the "Join a Talk" button.

• And finally, as interested citizens, posting commentary and letters to the editor about subjects that move them.

The site is maintained on servers on the USU campus. Day to day, students are in charge. Serving as publishers, the supervising professors of the Hard News Cafe are Nancy Williams and Michael S. Sweeney. Barry Kort of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology assists with technical issues.

We win more than our share of awards, and we're proud of what we do. But this site is not for our gratification. It's for the people of USU, Logan and Cache Valley -- and, thanks to the nature of the Web, people anywhere in the world who seek information, via Internet search engines, about the topics we cover.

If you have questions or would like to send a letter to the editor, the address is: kcowweb@hass.usu.edu.