Pros and cons for online and print media

By BECKY ATKINSON
Edited by ASHLEY CARROLL

Online Media
Kindle, Sony Reader, eBooks, smartphones, other Internet capable devices


A University student reads The Red & Black on his iTouch before class



Pros

• Individual books/articles are cheaper
• More economical
• Fast downloads of reading material
• Portable

Cons

• Eye strain
• Extreme initial expense
• Hard to annotate
• Battery powered
• Black and white pictures

Print Media
Books, newspapers, magazines

A University student reads the printed version of The Red & Black

Pros

• Tangible
• Familiar
• Easy to annotate
• Not battery powered; won’t be ruined if liquid is spilled nearby
• Colored pictures

Cons

• Take up lots of space
• Not environmentally friendly
• Not as easily accessible
  

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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Newspapers aren't dead yet

By BECKY ATKINSON
Edited by PRISCILLA KATHE

The Grim Reaper hasn’t arrived.

The death of newspapers has been a topic of interest around the country recently, but the situation of newspapers isn’t as dire as it seems.

In fact, the print version of the Atlanta Journal Constitution reached 20 percent more people in the Atlanta area than the online version did in the Atlanta area in March 2009, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

The Audit Bureau of Circulation also reported that the print version of the Athens Banner-Herald reached 50 percent more people in the same area as the online version did in March 2009.

But what about all those people using Kindles, smartphones and the Internet to receive the news?

Maybe readers aren’t moving into the digital world as much as everyone thinks.

When the Atlanta Journal Constitution redesigned their paper, the AJC did an extensive study using focus groups of AJC readers to find out exactly what readers wanted. The focus groups said they wanted more of an old-style newspaper with lots of stories on the front page and small photos.

“For the past few years, we’ve given up the idea of gaining readership and have been trying to hold on to readers we have,” Sunday editor Charles Gay said.

This thinking inspired a new marketing campaign for the Sunday paper launched in early 2009 with the slogan “Unplug, It’s Sunday.”

The campaign emphasizes the Sunday paper as a distinct paper from the daily AJC and promotes print media instead of online media.

Hardly any of the Sunday paper content goes online in an effort to encourage readers to buy the paper.

“[With suggestions from our readers and our new marketing campaign], we’ve seen a surprising and gratifying pick up in single copy circulation,” Gay said.

The Athens Banner-Herald is also not too worried about a transition from print media to online media.

“I think [readership in Athens is] more affected right now because of the economic downturn rather than people switching from print to online, if they weren’t reading online before,” said Linda Howard, the director of circulation and marketing strategies for the Banner-Herald.

“There is a decline in circulation and readership because of the demographic area,” Howard said.

Though Howard said print readership is declining because people cannot afford to buy the paper and not because of the Internet’s popularity, the audience numbers online are still growing tremendously.

Despite the increase in readership online, Howard remains confident in the print version.
“We’re still promoting the print product and it’s as strong as it can be right now,” Howard said.

Even the Red & Black remains unconcerned about print readership despite an increase in online readership.

Hayley Peterson, managing editor for the Red & Black, has not noticed a significant decrease in print readership.

“We are a bit different because we are a free paper,” Peterson said. “But we have noticed a decline in advertising.”

The Red & Black has what editor-in-chief Carolyn Crist calls a “captive audience” because the paper is free and readers can pick up papers from bins on their way to class. Crist said she doesn’t see readership declining that much though readership varies a little from day to day.

“[Readership] depends sometimes on the news of the day and if headlines are big and catchy,” Crist said. “We try to make headlines bigger.”

Though newspapers in general have been experiencing declining readership and circulation, Bert Roughton,, Jr., managing editor for the AJC, said AJC readers still want a print version.

“There seems to be a smaller, yet persistent, audience for a high quality and deeply local newspaper,” Broughton said. “We are focusing on both the printed and digital platforms with quite a bit of energy.”