Are Student Newspapers Doing Better Or Worse These Days?

from the depends-on-who-you-ask dept

Romenesko points us to an interesting pair of articles that seem to contradict each other. The first, from the Chronicle of Higher Education notes that college newspapers seem to be doing a good job thriving while big commercial newspapers struggle. There are a few reasons for this. Some might point out that the overhead of student newspapers is a lot lower, as much of the staff is often there on a volunteer, rather than paid, basis. However, student newspapers also represent a highly sought after readership demographic, which makes them more attractive to advertisers. Also, student newspapers are usually one of the only sources providing news concerning important news that impacts the community on campus. That is by focusing on that specific community, they remain important since there's really very little true competition.

Yet, the same Romenesko post then points us to an article from Inside Higher Ed, claiming that the print journalism "squeeze" is hitting college campuses, citing stories of a few student newspapers that are scaling back their print operations. In some ways this appears to conflict with the earlier article, though there may be extenuating circumstances. For example, those news organizations don't seem to be scaling back their online operations -- just the physical paper operations, which could just be a sign of how college students prefer to interact with the news these days. There may also be more specific circumstances that have made it more difficult for those particular newspapers to bring in ad revenue, as compared to other college newspapers that seem to have been able to do just fine bringing in ad revenue. Either way, it sounds like most college news organizations are doing okay, and it's just a few that have stumbled.

Filed Under: newspapers, student newspapers