At a recent reunion of my college newspaper, we talked about being pretty much the last generation of journalists to use typewriters. Today’s college journalists probably will be the last generation to write primarily for print, rather than online.
So why are college newspapers still being printed on paper?
Today’s college students are the most wired—and wireless—generation in history. They’ve grown up with the Internet, eschewing print. It’s a cruel fact of the media business that young people simply do not read newspapers. Instead, they keep up with the world and their friends via mobile devices, podcasts, RSS, IMs and Twitter. So why are they still reading printed copies of the Campus Bugle?
But has any college paper dropped its print edition? For sure, many online-only competitors have sprung up on various campuses in recent years. Virtually all college papers have extensive Web sites, many of them quite good. But the print editions persist. A friend who visited Stanford University recently was surprised to see that the Stanford Daily still has a print edition. If Stanford, the cradle of Silicon Valley, hasn’t gone newsprint-free yet, what college has? And why not?
There are several possible reasons, similar to those that have kept mainstream newspapers from ditching their print editions: Fear of losing advertising revenue, tradition, institutional sloth, and the fact that print may still be the best portable distribution medium. It’s probably still nice to be able to sneak glances at the college paper during a boring lecture (but aren’t bored students text-messaging anyway?) Or maybe college journalists still want to be able to present prospective employers newsprint-and-ink clips—though it will be better for them to have deep experience creating electronic products.
It could also be that college newspapers are the perfect example of a great hyperlocal product: They cover what’s going on in a tightly defined world for a tightly defined audience. Perhaps the delivery method is secondary. Even in print, such information still has great value and convenience, even though it's dated and non-interactive.
Still, you’d think that college papers, with an audience that’s 100 percent online and clearly prefers electronic media, would make the leap to online-only editions and benefit from the considerable savings on printing and distribution. It’s rather puzzling this hasn’t happened.
When I speak to college journalism classes, I tell them that they have a unique opportunity to invent the future. The media they’ll use and work in will be very different from what we’re familiar with today. They should be creating products they and there friends will like and use, rather than following hoary old traditions. Why not start by phasing out the printed college newspaper?
Mark:
One reason -- momentum.
Posted by: Charlie Barthold | April 15, 2007 at 05:43 PM
Mark, I think you said it yourself:
"Perhaps the delivery method is secondary." It's clear from research that college students actually read the paper versions as well as online. And print remains an effective campus advertising vehicle.
We're not yet at a point where all of a campus papers' advertisers will follow them to an online-only solution. So why jettison a platform while it's still making money?
(That's a separate issue from what j-students should be learning to do, BTW--they should be "investing" their time in future-oriented skills. But one of those skills is learning to work in a multi-platform world, one piece of which will likely be paper, in some form and frequency, probably for a bit longer than many of us expect.)
Posted by: Michael Rogers | April 16, 2007 at 08:41 AM
One one hand, J-Schools clearly need to teach students how to operate as reporters and editors in a 24-hour online news cycle.
But, the physical free college paper sitting in boxes all over a campus serves a student body that sits under trees reading, walks around campus glancing at the front page, does the crossword and sudoku instead of paying attention in class, folds the paper into a pocket, and flips it open on the shuttle bus from the parking lot to the quad.
Like an alt-weekly, the campus print edition fills a physical need.
That said, a daily print edition is probably a waste of time and resources. I'd go weekly, with an online edition updated constantly throughout the day.
Posted by: Ryan Sholin | April 16, 2007 at 10:29 AM
Mark,
One college newspaper has gone totally online - the Campus Lantern at Eastern Connecticut State University www.thecampuslantern.com, but it hasn't been without pain. online ad revenues are pennies compared to print edition. Readership of printed editions on campuses remains remarkably high precisely because of the captive audience (as ryan sholin pointed out). You can see some of our previous coverage of the online-only option for college papers here: http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/?s=online+only, it's something i've talked about quite a bit.
Posted by: Bryan Murley | April 16, 2007 at 01:11 PM