We’ve been seeing newspapers take a hit lately. It’s part of this whole adjustment to the Internet that we’re all still making. More people are getting their news online. It’s free. It’s fast. It’s easy. It’s chic. With the economy the way it is lately, newspapers are also seeing a decline in ad revenue and cut budgets across the board. For the larger papers, this isn’t the best situation, but they have a bit of a cushion–not to mention a devoted readership. It’s the local papers that are taking the biggest hits, and newspapers put out by college students are no exception.

The School Paper Is Sinking
Many tactics that are being employed are desperate. Some papers are dropping one issue a week; others are switching over to a one-hundred percent volunteer staff. What’s happened–apart from simply a decline in readers–is that many companies are cutting advertising costs. Small, student-run papers at the local university just don’t get them the sort of leads they need. Advertising in a school’s paper seems more like a donation than an investment to many of these companies. Unfortunately, the drop in readers–not to mention the fact that everyone is more broke than usual, and college students are notorious for lacking funds–makes advertising in school papers impractical at best.

A Tough Education
Cutting costs is always hard. Some people lose work, and everyone else gets more without getting paid a dime extra. If college newspapers were to stop the print editions of their papers all together, what would happen? They’d save a lot on printing, but would it work? There is something alluring about a physical newspaper. I remember when a new, ultra-conservative paper appeared on my campus. Everyone had it in their hands, whether they were outraged or excited.

If a similar situation happened today in which a Web site had suddenly gone live, no one would have cared. Despite the omnipresence of the iPhone and like devices, I don’t believe that students would be holding it up in the air decrying the text on the screen. There’s something about the physical presence of the paper on campus that gets people. Call it archaic, but it’s true. It’s probably the only thing keeping some papers alive. If the Internet, in all of its glory, isn’t the answer, then what is?