There is no one true path to success, either through your college paper, or through the internship at the major metro, so don't necessarily listen to everyone here when tell you with absolute certainty that your college paper experience is bullshirt and you'd be a moron if you stuck around.
For all the posters above who gave the middle finger to the college paper, signed up as an agate clerk, and worked their way up the ladder -- and credit all of their success to that decision -- I'm evidence that you don't have to do it that way. I worked at my college paper for three years. I had one summer internship, and one semester I worked for both the local paper and my college paper, but the most foolish thing I could have done was ditch the college newspaper entirely and jump right into the professional field.
Why? Because when I applied for jobs during my senior year, it was clips from my college paper that got me a job at a major metro, not my professional clips. But if you stay at the college paper, you have to push yourself like you wouldn't believe. Write like your next rent check depends on it. Instead of staying comfortable at my college paper, I took risks. I wrote feature stories like I expected them to run in Sports Illustrated. I tried magazine-style narrative writing, and even though I crashed and burned sometimes, occasionally I hit home runs too. I couldn't have done that writing 10-inch high school football game stories and answering phones at the local rag.
Everyone's college newspaper experience is different. If yours sucks, and the people around you are insufferable fools, then perhaps getting out is the right call. But the people I worked with remain some of my best friends to this day. The camaraderie we developed staying up to 3 a.m. putting the paper together is something I would not trade for any amount of money or the job of my choice. For some people, skipping the college newspaper experience is the right call, and I don't begrudge them one bit for that choice. But for those out there reading this thread who are not Eagleboy, and are having lots of fun at their college newspaper but are wondering if they should get serious about their career, let me at least say this: You have the rest of your life to work. 40 hours a week for 40-plus years is a long fricken time. And as DyePack pointed out, there is bullshirt at every level, and incompetence everywhere you go. In college, I wrote because I loved the thrill of storytelling and because I believed I could change the world. As a professional, I still love the craft of storytelling, but a lot of days I do it because I have a mortgage payment and a grocery bill to pay.
Not everyone benefits from charging like a bull directly into the work force, folks. In fact, some people burn out quicker that way. I'm a firm believer that if you have talent, and you're willing to pick up and move, you'll succeed in this business, regardless of your starting point. It's true, some employers will scoff at your college clips, and say there is no substitute for real life experience. Others, no so much. Anyone who tells you one path is absolutely better than the other is kidding themselves.
Whatever you decide, take advantage of the opportunities college presents. Take English literature classes. Take history classes. Take American Studies classes. heck, take science classes. Soak up as much information as you can, because it's always going to be that much harder to find the time to do it once you start having real life work obligations. The people who I admire the most are the ones who write like they're crafting sentences that will stand the test of time. Some of them learned to write like that by writing for their college paper. Others learned by going to graduate school. Plenty others honed their style by writing for a newspaper every day since they were 17. A chosen few read SportsJournalists.com every day. Everyone is different.
The only universal truth is this: College papers almost always have slutty arts or features editors, and most harbor a secret desire to make out with the sports editor that only reveals itself after ingesting copious amounts of cheap alcohol. Take advantage of this while you can, even if you're one foot out the door. This, I will not argue.
