Ad revenue shortfall halts summer publication for OSU’s Lantern
April 1, 2008 in College Media News
(editor’s note: Wording changed to reflect my meaning more accurately.)Â #
The Lantern, student newspaper at THE Ohio State University, will not publish print editions this summer, thanks to declining ad revenues (see Budget cuts shred summer edition of student paper). The Lantern is experiencing something the newspaper industry as a whole is going through, as 2007 ad revenues declined more than ever. #
For the Lantern, much of the loss is coming in classifieds: #
The Lantern’s advertising department has experienced losses due to Web sites such as craigslist.org, which offer users the opportunity to place classifieds online at no cost, Catalino said. #In an e-mail exchange with me, Catalino wrote, “Through February, our classifieds are down $93,000 from last year to date, and last year was down from the previous year by $136,000.” #
For a news operation that is “100 percent self-sufficient,” that’s a huge chunk of change. And – as is the case with many student publications – online revenue is a paltry sum – 3 percent of total ad revenue. It is instructive that Catalino mentioned craigslist specifically as a factor in the decline. If you don’t have craigslist in your area, thank your lucky stars, because newspapers have learned that it’s almost impossible to compete with free. #
The newspaper is run by the Communication Department, whose officials made the decision to cancel the summer publication. Catalino was against the move. (Why a 100 percent self-sufficient student newspaper is run by the Comm Department is a topic for another article – ed.) #
The Lantern article mentions that the practicum class that produces the Lantern will still be offered in the summer term, but “plans to put student stories on The Lantern’s Web site have not been finalized.” #
The school has not purchased additional equipment to deliver web-specific content, Catalino said. If that’s the case, publishing student stories on the web won’t teach students anything more than they would have learned publishing a printed product – and actually will teach them less. The Lantern is a College Publisher site has a content management system (College Publisher), so it’s not like they’re learning advanced web publishing skills. #
Catalino said he thinks this move does not bode well for the future of the student newspaper at OSU. He sees a push to get rid of the print edition entirely down the road. #
I will leave it for others to debate the merits of cutting print publications which bring in money so you can cover a budget shortfall, but I agree that this is Not a Good Sign for student media. If the student newspaper at the largest university in the U.S. is facing such declines in ad revenue and circulation, it may be that the massive disruptions the industry has been facing for some time are finally filtering down to the college level. #
I feel badly for Ray Catalino and the students at Ohio State about the decisions that are being made there. Most college papers publish less frequently and less robustly in the summer, and many lose money doing it — but see it as part of our educational mission, training underclassmen who may become future managers and editors, as well as serving our campus communities during those summer months. The university's lack of involvement with the paper's adviser and paid staff is especially troubling, along with wording like "freedom to experiment with changes" and "the paper will be much stronger".
But I also have a nit to pick with Bryan for your continued bias against schools using College Publisher: "The Lantern is a College Publisher site, so it’s not like they’re learning advanced web publishing skills." Wow! That's pretty damning. And pretty disparaging to all of us who use this system. Our editors have designed and coded our entire College Publisher-powered site from scratch. They have created their own blog system. Their own video carousel and player. Their own SQL databases and PHP code to serve it up to the web. I'm not going to suggest that the College Publisher system is the greatest thing since sliced bread, as it certainly has its shortcomings the company is aiming to fix in the next-generation system. I'm not going to even say you should love it, or that it's right for everyone, or that it's among the best CMS solutions out there. But to say that everyone who's using CP can't possibly be learning advanced web publishing skills is incorrect and shows a tremendous bias or disdain on your part (even though the site you advise uses CP).
Eric,
Thank you for your comment. I would like for you to spend some time searching through the archives of this weblog to find all the positive things I've said about college publisher and what it does for college media sites. And I would also like for you to spend some time reading about some of the more advanced efforts that are put out by college publisher-based publications like yours and the Daily Tarheel, for instance.
Now, I have a bone to pick with you. You say: "They have created their own blog system. Their own video carousel and player. Their own SQL databases and PHP code to serve it up to the web." Guess what, Eric. None of that requires College Publisher. The blog system in use in CP is WordPress MU, an open-source platform that requires nothing of CP. The blogs on your site are powered by WordPress (2.3.2 if I read the source code correctly). Again, you don't need CP to do that.
Sure, you can design and code the HTML/CSS for the entire site, but do you really think the practicum students are going to be doing that?
My point was that the CP system is pretty much turn-key for regular users. I seriously doubt the Lantern's summer staff will be overhauling the entire site. Perhaps they will, if so, good for them. And unless you're putting out multimedia or building stuff independently in Flash or some other format, the current CP system is not that advanced for most users.
You write:
"But to say that everyone who’s using CP can’t possibly be learning advanced web publishing skills is incorrect and shows a tremendous bias or disdain on your part (even though the site you advise uses CP)."
You are creating a straw man argument, Eric. I didn't say that "everyone" who uses CP can't possibly be learning advanced web publishing skills. I was speaking to a single, specific instance in a single, lab-based newspaper.
I would also note that from what I've seen of the new CP system, it is a vast improvement, and will likely lead to a lot more innovations at newspapers that are using it (like Brad Arendt's experiment with XML).
“The Lantern is a College Publisher site, so it’s not like they’re learning advanced web publishing skills.â€
Shouldn't that statement be, "The Lantern has a CMS, so it's not like they're learning advanced web publishing skills."
? At least if you define 'advanced web publishing skills' as managing databases and designing pages.
If they do publish online throughout the summer, whoever works on The Lantern will learn things about web publishing just by thinking web first for a whole summer, and hopefully being off a rigid issue based structure.
Albert,
I've changed the post to reflect the wording you suggest, as it's a little closer to what I was getting at. I do agree that they will learn *some* things about web publishing. but they will learn *less* about numerous aspects of print publication, which still brings in the lion's share of revenue for all newspapers. It's an imperfect solution to a difficult problem.
Bryan, I've read many of your posts and I know you sometimes say favorable things about College Publisher — but I've also seen you say things like you did here, which come off pretty negative. Yes, I know that some of the things our editors have done with our site are outside the College Publisher CMS, but my point is that they're still able to do them, and on servers CP provides for just such purposes. for example, the page Albert created for student government elections at Penn:
http://lamp.dailypennsylvanian.com/uacbcandidatec…
My point was simply that people who want to learn and practice web publishing skills beyond basic shoveling print content to web can do so, whether they use the CP platform or not.
You wrote: "I didn’t say that 'everyone' who uses CP can’t possibly be learning advanced web publishing skills. I was speaking to a single, specific instance in a single, lab-based newspaper." But what you wrote originally was: "The Lantern is a College Publisher site, so it’s not like they’re learning advanced web publishing skills.†If you don't see that sentence describing a cause and effect, I guess we'll have to disagree over the semantics, but that's what I was reacting to.
Point taken. I could have worded it better. I should say that I would have said the same thing if they were using wordpress or drupal (assuming the CMS/MySQL/PHP/CSS/HTML were already in place when they got there). Putting static content onto a web site – "shovelware" – is what I imagine they'd be doing, considering that the school hasn't purchased additional equipment for such purposes, according to Ray. IMHO, that would be a step down from publishing a print publication.
Just a point of clarification on Eric's post pointing out our election center.
While it was a project that I put together and coordinated for the most part, much of the actual code holding it together was written by someone else on our web staff, Jared Getzoff.
If any college newspaper wants a real, usable CMS system to drive your online publishing, pleas contact me.
Very interesting. Never ceases to amaze me what you find online or happening on the net these days.
Does look to be something that happens on Craigslist a lot.
Does it ever cease to amaze you with all the news and happenings about Craigslist?
Have to say I do agree. Things like this just are what they are.