Black and White and in the Red Student Newspapers Scurry to Make Ends Meet

Greg Kahn for The New York Times

At George Mason University, the student newspaper and an online news site combined forces to create Fourth Estate.

By JENNIFER PRESTON

Published: October 31, 2013

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WITHIN a month of taking over as editor of The Hatchet, George Washington University’s student newspaper, Cory Weinberg knew that something had to change. Advertising dollars had been steadily declining. Printing costs continued to rise. At the same time, visits to the website were up. The number of students reading articles on their mobile devices had doubled. Traffic from Twitter had increased 300 percent in the last year.

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Greg Kahn for The New York Times

Cory Weinberg, editor of The G.W. Hatchet, now just a weekly.

In June, he and the general manager outlined a plan for the paper’s board of directors to eliminate one of two weekly editions and invest more heavily in online coverage and ways to reach students through mobile and social media. At first, Mr. Weinberg worried that the board, made up mostly of Hatchet alumni, journalism professionals and professors, would balk.

“There’s been tension elsewhere over cutting editions,” said Mr. Weinberg, a senior majoring in economics and journalism. “And, honestly, I expected some resistance, especially when you are talking about changing an organization that people love. But they got it.” The board’s decision was unanimous.

Becoming a weekly is just one of the efforts to help ensure the future of this 109-year-old newspaper. The Hatchet, which is independent of G.W.U., pays $4,520 in monthly rent to the university. And so an alumni group called Home for The Hatchet bought it a townhouse.

To bolster its $2 million fund-raising drive, the group is offering “naming opportunities.” Donors have pledged $50,000 each for engraved plaques outside the offices of the editor in chief and business manager. The newsroom will be sponsored for $50,000 by Berl Brechner, a longtime television executive and 1967 Hatchet editor in chief, who fondly remembers covering the tumult of the Vietnam protests there.

Naming opportunities are still available for the sports and opinion offices and staff lounge. The entire building can be had for a $750,000 pledge.

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THE HATCHET, like many college newspapers with long traditions, has until recently managed to stave off industry challenges that have forced professional news organizations to make deep budget cuts. When print advertising revenue fell 9 percent for commercial newspapers in 2007, college newspapers enjoyed a 15 percent increase. But the student media landscape has been shaken in the last two years by plummeting revenues and changing reading patterns.

“In the last year in particular, we have seen a contraction in the marketplace,” said Tammy Nelson, vice president for marketing and research for the marketing company re:fuel. “The measures a lot of college newspapers took in recent years, maybe cutting editions from five days a week to four days a week, trimming sections now and then, got them through the downturn. But they are having to look at other ways now to be profitable.”

At the University of Texas, Austin, The Daily Texan has been relying on a reserve fund to help make up a free fall in ad revenue from $2.2 million in 2007 to $1.3 million last year, according to Friends of The Daily Texan, an alumni group organized to help the paper that counted Walter Cronkite and Bill Moyers on its staff.

At the University of California, Berkeley, the 142-year-old Daily Californian is in the midst of an ambitious fund-raising campaign after a single anonymous donor who had been helping fill growing budget gaps pulled out this summer.

Former staff members have helped The Daily Illini, the student-run newspaper at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, begin to pay down its $250,000 debt. Roger Ebert, the late film critic and D.I. editor in chief, had appealed to fellow newspaper alumni in a widely circulated letter on Facebook that helped drive donations. “Many, including myself, would say that they owe their careers at least in part to their experience at Illini Media,” he wrote. “It’s now time to give back.”

The Daily Illini is among several financially independent campus news organizations that have asked students to support small fee increases. Beginning this semester, Illinois students pay a media fee of $1.85, which is expected to cover 9 percent of this year’s budget. A $3 fee was approved last April at the University of California, Irvine. The student body at Western Michigan University initiated and voted for a $10 annual fee to support the newspaper as well as radio and broadcast station. Students at the University of Connecticut balked at a $6 increase for its student newspaper, but noting that voter turnout on the issue was small, the trustees approved the fee for this academic year, putting off the debate for another year.

The University of Georgia’s Red and Black and the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily have recently cut back the number of days they publish print editions.

Ms. Nelson warns that college papers that eliminate too many of their print editions do so at their peril. Re:fuel research shows that students still enjoy picking up copies, free and convenient as they are, stacked in the student union and dorm lounges. In 2011, 60 percent of students read their college paper — a testament, if you will, to its importance as an outlet for student concerns, from tuition increases to the quality of food in the cafeteria. Of those readers, 60 percent preferred print, while 16 percent preferred to get their college news online.