The Rise of the College Newspaper

A Newsweek article from December entitled, “College Papers Grow Up,” was about how some college newspapers have ads, readers, and budgets that match professional newspapers. The newspaper industry has not been having the best luck, which has led to shrinking profits and layoffs, but many college newspapers are thriving. “Today’s premier college dailies – big, colorful and aggressive – are often indistinguishable from professional broadsheets, and the resemblance goes beyond the front page.” Some college newspaper offices are comparable to those of a real newspaper. For example, the UCLA Daily Bruin’s office is lined with over 100 Apple workstations and the Harvard Crimson recently spent $400,000 on color presses and design consultants.

Advertisers are looking to these big time college newspapers to reach the college demographic. Advertisers are aware of the fact that college students are young, educated, brand-conscious, and have a great deal of spending power, with an estimated $41 billion a year spent on discretionary items. An estimated 95 percent of college students read the campus paper, even though professional papers are losing readers. Alloy Media + Marketing, which I have written about in a prior blog entry, links college papers with national advertisers. They work with 1,800 papers which reach about 11.8 million students. Advertising in a college paper can cost more than $2,500 for a one-time full-page color ad, but this is only a fraction of what it costs to advertise in a daily metropolitan publication. Companies that have turned to advertising in college papers include investment banks and technology companies that are looking to recruit potential employees. Additionally, well-known companies such as Amazon.com, Verizon Wireless, and major movie studios are creating national campaigns and spending millions on student daily papers each year.

I have reported in past blog entires about how some people feel that advertising in college newspapers is ineffective and a waste of money. In some cases, that might hold true, but when dealing with publications such as the ones talked about in this article, advertisers are obviously finding them to be successful. The newspapers mentioned in the article come from big colleges and universities, which have large budgets and numerous staff members. The end of the article mentioned that many smaller colleges have just as good-quality reporting as the big schools. Having a bigger budget doesn’t necessarily mean that the journalism will be better. I was pleased that the article mentioned that, coming from a smaller school that has a weekly newspaper. I find that most students read the weekly newspaper here, so I assume that students read daily newspapers at their colleges. Even though newspaper ads are not interactive and do not always empower the consumer, they are guaranteed to have many students who will see the ads. If a company wants to market to the college demographic, newspaper ads definitely seem like an effective method, depending on the college and their newspaper’s reputation.