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.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: newspapers, student newspapers


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Kevin Donovan, 19 Sep 2008 @ 6:05pm

    College Newspaper Insider

    I'm involved with theHoya.com which is Georgetown's paper and I can tell you that we are feeling the crunch. It's not terrible, but people are definitely spending less on newspaper ads and many advertisers (especially local) are not comfortable or familiar with online advertising so we've had to face an uphill battle.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.