The Paper Trail blog at U.S. News & World Report has begun its annual Best in College Newspapers contest.

The categories are Story of the Year, Nonstory of the Year, Newsmaker of the Year, and Best Alternative Media Outlet.

Firstly, we were wondering… r we alternative enough? R we snarky enough? Should we be more like Hipster Runoff? You tell us.

The Paper Trail blog offered a little explanation about the categories.

Best Alternative Media Outlet: For the past two years, this has by far been the most popular category. It’s unclear what the parameters are, but basically anything that involves campus news and is not the traditional print college newspaper is OK. I’ll accept blogs (both newspaper staffed and outsider), podcasts, Tumblrs, robust Twitter feeds, YouTube channels, or whatever. The point is: We’re so hip, anything goes.

This also is the category with the most voting irregularities, so I’m always looking for ideas on how to make this more fair. Also, a note to an unnamed liberal arts school in the Northeast: I’m sorry that a blog coming out of a giant state school (On the Record’s University of Michigan blog) beat yours last year. I can’t help that its student body is something like a gazillion times larger than yours. Maybe I should break down the votes per capita, but that sounds like a lot of work for me. I’m still open to suggestions, though.

It seems like last year Michigan’s College OTR beat Wesleying for the title, which is just a tragedy. We are huge fans of Wesleying (we subscribe and we don’t even go there).