Campus Print Readership Steady

Jessica Smith and Antionette Rollins, both journalism majors, scan the front page of the Red and Black outside Park Hall.

by Chari Sutherland

Miriam Camp, editor

For a college newspaper, it can be a challenge to get their print product into student hands that seem perpetually connected to technological devices.

However, Ed Morales, the Editorial Director of the University of Georgia’s The Red and Black, said there are certain events that lead the reader to print media. Last spring’s stories about the shooting involving UGA marketing professor George Zinkhan is one example. “(During that,) you couldn’t find a paper anywhere on campus,” Morales said.

A recent challenge for The Red and Black was the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ceasing delivery of its papers to the Athens area. The bins that The Red and Black had shared with the AJC were removed. This decreased readership slightly. Morales said the print edition has not consistently suffered despite this. “Our circulation is 30,000 to 35,000 with the pass-along rate,” he said. Readership is encouraged, he said, because the paper is free and it gives students something to do while waiting for class.

At The Daily Gamecock, the student newspaper of the University of South Carolina (USC), the situation is similar.

“We can’t keep the print version on the shelves at the beginning of the semester,” said Scott Lindenburg, Director of Student Media at USC. By midterms, their readership begins to decline slightly, possibly due to the level of student schoolwork, he said.

USC’s Gamecock experienced growth beginning in 2006. “We went from a three-day a week paper to a five-day.” He said there were spots on or near campus that are found to be hotter or colder depending on stories and time of year. They also do readership surveys to find out what readers want to see in the paper. Their writing style has gotten shorter and they rely on more images to draw people in.

Danielle Everson, the Managing Editor at Valdosta State University’s The Spectator,
said their readership has also increased. “Our staff has been focused on the issues that matter the most on our campus,” she said. Last year, they increased their number of published copies from 3,000 to 4,000.

Alex McDaniel has been editor of The Daily Mississippian at the University of Mississippi since March. She said in previous years, the print version of The Mississippian declined primarily because of poor content and design. The paper was still trying to serve as its readers’ sole source of breaking news—a model that has started to fail. Readers have begun to access news from online sources.

“We were giving readers things they didn’t need or want,” McDaniel said. “(We) needed to give them something they couldn’t get elsewhere.” As a result, the paper is now doing more features and investigative stories, which is more interesting and inviting. At USC, Lindendburg said he’s found readers are also drawn to original cartoons or Sudoku puzzles.

The Mississippian readership responses are becoming more positive, McDaniel said. There have been more empty receptacles, a high pass-along rate and more Web site traffic. She said this is because, “we package stories so they lead online.”

When discussing social media, Morales, Lindenburg and McDaniel all spoke about “the brand”—their individual papers. As McDaniel put it, The Mississippian doesn’t think separately about their print product, their Web site, their Facebook page, or Twitter account. “We see it all as a brand--one brand and one product.”

McDaniel said Twitter and live blogging are valuable for getting campus news—such as game scores—out quickly. The USC Gamecock also uses Twitter to post updates on a football games and breaking news.

Morales said The Red and Black’s Web site readership increases during football season also. As many as 80 to 82 percent of visitors to the site are from outside Athens. The Red and Black football blog gets 1000 viewers a day. Lindenburg said The Daily Gamecock gets as many as 8,000 hits a day during game season.

The Spectator’s participation on Twitter and Facebook has helped increase the VSU student body’s awareness of the paper. However, keeping those online media updated is a constant challenge, Everson said.

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