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Students have returned to college campuses armed with laptops, smart phones and countless other electronic gadgets. Yet most still turn to a print newspaper for their campus news.
The printed versions of college newspapers continue to thrive, with students grabbing copies as they go from one class to another. It’s not unusual to see students reading about the latest campus news while eating a quick lunch or taking a break on the lawn.
It’s far less likely that the wired generation, raised with iPods and smart phones, is checking out the news on the newspaper’s website.
I can’t tell you how many college journalism events I go to, where they discuss “the future of journalism.” The only time student media even comes up is for someone to deplore it as unserious and students’ love of it as insignificant. It only counts as reading a paper if you read the Times, kids!
Some of this is the usual amateur versus professional argument with which blogtopia is familiar. Some of it is that a lot of our pundit critters aren’t researchers, and just say things based on the last poll to cross their desks. But they ignore the reasons student papers succeed, and the reasons they do succeed could be valuable lessons to media companies that have responded to the loss of customers by making their products worse:
“College newspapers are niche publications,” said Lloyd Goodman, director of student publications at the university. “Students like to pick it up, read it over lunch. It’s still a community newspaper.”
That may help explain why, in general, local commercial newspapers have had trouble gaining a foothold with students. Several of the college newspaper advisors I spoke with described repeated — and unsuccessful — efforts by commercial newspapers in their areas to sell more on campus.
“I don’t see students hovering over the Los Angeles Times here,” said Mona Cravens, director of student publications at the University of Southern California. “The faculty, staff and students have come to rely on the Daily Trojan for what’s going on on campus.”
The campus is their town, and the campus paper covers their town. It’s easy to get, it’s useful and convenient to them, and it’s distributed where they see it all the time. What’s in it varies widely from campus to campus, and the skill with which it’s produced varies as well, but it’s their paper. That sense of ownership and loyalty requires some hard work and money to build, but once built it’s hard to lose. Media companies today destroyed it on purpose in relentless pursuit of profit, forgetting where those profits come from in the first place:
Stephen Heleker, student body president at Boise State University, told me in an e-mail that students spend so much time on computers doing school work that “they value the respite offered” by the print version of the college newspaper. “It definitely becomes part of the routine at college.”
A newspaper, part of your daily routine. Imagine.
x-posted at First Draft
A.
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I would be curious to know how many students at a given school favor the print edition of the campus paper over an online edition. Here at the University of Iowa, for example, the Daily Iowan certainly has an online presence, but there’s still a lot of paper copies circulating on any given day.
Allison!
This encapsulates so much of what is wrong with American journalism and the newspaper business today. What made newspapers and other print news media so vibrant in the past was that there were so many of them that people could generally find something that appealed to them. They were focused and had definite, and diverse, points of view, rather than today’s bland undifferentiated moderately conservative papers.
I have no idea how many students read the online version of the Montana Kaimin, but there are tons of them reading the print edition all over campus. They also avidly read the local free weekly, The Missoula Independent. I actually see many more of them reading either of those than the mainstream chain daily (The Missoulian).
Shrink your way into prosperity.
And while you’re at it, raise your price.
No doubt about it, the execs of print media are geniuses.
So many recycling uses too. Book marks. Note taking paper. Fire starter.
Who could turn it down.
Our local daily rag is now charging for online content as well (after a limited number of views per month). Of course, you can easily get around that by erasing the cookies they leave (the same thing works for the NYT paywall as well BTW).
BTW, I read the dead tree edition so seldom, I find myself needing to buy the Sunday NYT from Times to Times, just to make sure I have enough to relight my wood stove in the morning.
The free weekly is actually a pretty good paper (better overall than the MSM daily). They do not have a large staff and do not cover everything, but try to go in depth on what they do cover and they have a strong point of view, mostly focusing on local, state, and regional issues. They also have better coverage of the local arts scene.
Geez, I didn’t really need to know that.
I already have such a low opinion of corp execs, you are forcing me to close my mind on the subject.
File under: NO command of the obvious.
I don’t know how many students are into the free local dailies or weeklies, but otherwise my observations match yours pretty closely.
LOL!
Fortunately, the local daily is so desperate for subscribers that they are constantly leaving free copies to induce you, so I always have plenty on hand to start the charcoal for the grill.
OT: Stay classy, Republicans.
Our Lords of Commerce really are not all that bright and never have been overall.
They’re all dinosaurs. The internet is an excuse. The web didn’t kill newspapers, the fact that they all present one point of view did. I could watch CNN or MSNBC and get the same narrative as I can from FOX for example, even if presented in less rabid terms. I can read the NYT and I might as well be reading WaPo or Chicago Tribune and The Hill is virtually indistinguishable from Politico. That’s why I stopped taking the paper anyway.
Saw that earlier. No eliminationist rhetoric on the right in this country!
Imagine the pearl clutching if that had been the chimp three years ago.
EDIT: And you’d HAVE to imagine it cause it never happened.
Lotsa giveaways around mid-Hudson. Many of them tourist, RE related. But they do have some interesting articles on new restaurants and local produce/farming, a big topic here.
I remember hearing an absolutely clueless, pompous John Burns of NYT opine about how NYT knows eggsactly what it is doing. Musta been about 2005. And seeing snot nosed Pinch Sulzberger cohosting WJ perhaps a decade ago when he was 30-something, all preened out. Gah.
A-yup.
Who would win the race to the right? Pols or newspapers.
Only your hairdresser knows for sure.
Faux, from the occasional headline I read on thinkprogress, seems to be getting better at calling out wingnuts than all the others combined.
LOL on that!
Media consolidation and uniformity of (center-right) message has been their downfall. Also the drive for ever greater profits to fund the ever greater rents extracted by management and ownership (a few years ago they were running 20%+ profit margins, though that has declined since the recession). Right now, the internet fulfills the functions of the once vibrant local press with all its diversity of viewpoints. I think that newspapers (either in print or on the net) still have a future if they would just grasp it. Given their financial resources, they have the potential for far more extensive and in-depth reporting on local and regional issues that would drive sales. Unfortunately, the same people seem to be running them as are running European economic policy.
LMAO! My “hairdresser” doesn’t know Barack Obama from Bill O’Reilly.
We have those as well, which I have never seen anybody read. The Independent is a real newspaper, if somewhat limited, which makes all its revenues from advertising.
Yep, that’s what I said except I didn’t say it nearly as clearly and concisely. I think you’re right. There’s a pretty strong niche for print newspapers but the very fact that so many of them are committed to charging for online content demonstrates that they are incapable of grasping it.
Exactly. The internets didn’t destroy the MSM, the MSM did it to themselves with their shitty reporting and smug attitude towards anything that might be authentically progressive or serious.
I was riffing off the Clairol ads. Did u catch that?
I googled it but it was going to take a few more clicks than I wanted to spend on the topic to find the perfect link.
And people still read books, listen to CD’s and vinyl, and watch DVD’s, despite the MSM reporting to the contrary.
Grammophone records, VHS tapes, 8 tracks, yeah, they’re gone, sorry.
Faux has a job to do: make sure that only the right wingnut wins the nomination.
Righto. Ads are the revenue source.
Could never figure out why any print newspaper charged anything.
Although there is an economic theory that if something costs nothing, that’s how it is valued.
Like all econ theories I think there’s some truth to it. So I forgive the print version of high falutin’ print media for charging something. But see NO reason for raising prices while demand is falling.
Maybe that’s just me.
I did. That’s why I put hairdresser in quotes because the term isn’t really appropriate for this guy. :)
It really is a reluctance to be seen as embracing any point of view. The cult of faux centrism is destroying the press, along with the absence of strong, aggressive local reporting and a complete absence of investigative reporting in most places. Those are the things that people will pay for, but which the papers have abandoned in their drive to do everything on the cheap.
I understand that.
But still….
When Faux is a more accurate news source, one surely has to smack one’s forehead.
Just checkin’.
Businesses long ago abandoned sustainability for short term profit. But you are more aware of this than I am no doubt.
My understanding is that originally, the price originally was intended to cover just distribution cost, with profits and most operating costs coming out of ad revenues. It is hard, even for a really popular paper, to sustain 20% profit margins on just add revenues.
They’re just terrified of being called “liberal” so they deliberately lean way right. The journalists who are honest with themselves know what they are doing but feel trapped. I notice The Nation is doing great.
…if only because it’s “impolite” to smack Roger Ailes’.
Not just raising prices, but simultaneously lowering quality. That is not just shooting yourself in the foot, it is a straight shot to the head.
But if a newspaper in a place with a stagnant or even declining readership doesn’t increase profit by every quarter, the greedy shareholders are going to roll some heads. It encourages malfeasance and journalistic compromise. It’s no longer about being a robust pillar of the community. Now everything has to be a profit maximizing mill.
Biz did NOT abandon profitability. Sucking off the taxpayer tit is MUCH more profitable than, well, ya know, ah, actually running a legit biz & working (what a quaint notion for CEOs) for a living.
20% profit margin sounds livable.
I have to sleep though. Oya all.
Didn’t say they abandoned profit. I said they abandoned sustainability FOR profit. Just to be clear.
Yep. The increasing demands by the parasitic rentier investor, which have been growing since the late 70s, is destroying all of American business, not just the press.
No shit. At the time the newspapers were getting that, the national average for corporate profits was 8.3%.
Night!
Fair enough.
I was still on Wall St. while this was in train (to use Greenspan phrase). LBOs in the 1980s were the most obvious manifestation, though, in retrospect, it started earlier.
I remember wondering where & how it would end. Had a full time job & was a single mom, so no time to do anything more intelligent than wonder.
But at least, in my naive defense, I did ask myself the Q at the time.
Glad you recognized the comparison without my having to rub your nose in it.
Think I’m going to wander off to bed, too. Peace out, y’all!
My local newspaper was part of my routine when it cost a quarter and was stuffed with world, national, and local news by people who knew what they were doing. Now it costs a dollar and is about a third as thick, and most of the non-local news is the same wire services that everyone else has. I’m asked to spend four times as much for 1/3 the value, and even if you factor in inflation, the price/value ratio is at least a factor of eight worse.
They’ve gone in the wrong direction, and they should figure out how they can afford to give the paper away. Make it ad-supported, and give it to everyone. That way any advertiser who wants to reach everyone in a community knows exactly what to do: buy an ad in the local newspaper, because everyone will see it. No single web site or TV show would have the same reach.
Started in the late 70s, with the so called “share holders revolt” led by Carl Icahn and T. Boone Pickens. Insisted that businesses had to prioritize return to investors over all other factors and increase profitability every quarter. Given that these were two of the most notorious corporate raiders of the period who specialized in buying controlling interest in companies and then gutting them for short term profit and then dumping them at fire sale prices, I never understood why anyone listened to them.
Great read, great comments one and all.
Thanks.
Time for me to toddle off as well. Take care all.
Good points, all of them
Icahn and Pickens. Names that should (but won’t) live in infamy. What a buncha horses asses.
On edit: Justa reminder. I’m eCAHN, not Icahn.
Nite DrD.
So sorry I missed this conversation. I am watching my local paper go down faster and faster. 3 of the columnists that made getting the paper worth doing have just left, including the editor (who wrote a weekly column very worth reading).
These are local columnists, of course. Over the past 5 or 6 years they have dumped nearly all the locals, which of course were the first things most folks turned to. They kept, for unfathomable reasons, the tv columnist, who has always been virtually unreadable, while dumping the movie reviewer, the local political columnist, the best general columnists, etc., etc. No doubt because they were, as veterans who acctually knew how to write (and how to report), they were “expensive.”
I’m reading an account of the subject in book form, now, by one of the late editors of the LA Times. His thesis is also that the internet did not kill papers, papers set themselves up by first, expecting that 20% profits could continue, then ignoring rather than responding to the online developments, and especially, consolidation of media companies which led to atrocities like making publishers of cereal executives who thought editorial and marketing should be merged.
In other words, dating back some time, greed.
Yupper.
The NYT and LAT and other papers that focus on a national view will be primarily read from their websites. The papers with a local focus — especially rural papers — will be read in physical form.