Posts Tagged ‘Advertising’

Ivy League Student Newspapers Hurting Financially– Due to Loss of Financial Job Ads

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 9, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

As anyone with a post-Christmas credit card bill will tell you, there is no better way to start the New Year than with bad financial news.  In that spirit, The Daily Princetonian at Princeton University has provided the first sobering– and significant– scoop about college media money matters in 2013.

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According to the Prince***, the revenues of student newspapers at Ivy League schools are shrinking due to a noticeable drop in recruiting ads being placed by major financial institutions.

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As several Ivy-covered sources tell Prince staff writer Sarah Cen, the decline in these ads is mainly tied to the Wall Street troubles that erupted starting in 2008. The article’s keyword tags sum it up most succinctly: Investment Banking, Recession.

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So is it simply that A-list national employers are not hiring nearly as many ambitious twentysomethings right out of school?  Or do they also possibly see the campus newspaper as a less influential recruiting vehicle than it once was?

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The most telling quote in Cen’s report comes from Columbia Daily Spectator advertising manager Daniel Smullyan.  If you read it quietly, you can almost hear economic indicators and ink stains crying: ”At its height probably around 2000 during the dot-com period– we had a tremendous amount of recruitment ads.  People were hiring all over the place.  Now we get very few.  I’d say it’s 10 percent what it was 10 to 12 years ago. . . . Print advertising is definitely drying up– period.  It’s not just recruitment.  Print advertising is just not nearly in the demand that it once was.”

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Happy 2013.

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I’ve reached out to EIC Henry Rome for a follow-up explanation of just how poor a state this ad gap leaves an outstanding paper like the Prince.  Is it simply one additional hurdle to be overcome or a truly fatal blow leaving the pub almost solely reliant on plasma donation and Holocaust denial spots?

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Update, 5 p.m., Rome kindly answered my question via email: “There’s no question that the recent decline in recruitment advertising has been a significant loss for us, and it has forced our advertising team to aggressively pursue new advertisers and new modes of advertising, which has kept us stable.  Of course, our margins for error are now much smaller because of the profit hit.  But we do not think we are facing an existential crisis.  We are confident that advertisers recognize that college news organizations– both in print and online– are still the premier way to reach college students across the country.  We don’t have control over whether companies want to recruit, but if they choose to do so, I think we can make a very compelling argument for advertising in the ‘Prince’ (cool nickname aside).”

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*** Is there a cooler nickname for a student or professional paper anywhere?

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Breaking News: Badger Herald at UW-Madison Ending Friday Print Edition; Interview with Editor-in-Chief

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 9, 2012 | 3 Comments »

The Badger Herald, one of two independent student newspapers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be ending its Friday print edition.  In a phone chat this afternoon, editor-in-chief Ryan Rainey cited “a noticeable change in the way advertisers are behaving” and an interest in focusing on digital innovation as two core reasons behind the change.  It will be announced to readers on Monday in an editor’s column by Rainey.

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Rainey said he is excited to shift the newsroom culture on Thursday nights to what he’s dubbed a “voluntary sandbox,” in which creative, digital-first coverage ideas will be sketched out, batted around, and potentially implemented by the staff.  He also stressed the paper will remain in print, as always, Mondays through Thursdays.  In his words, “This is purely a Friday switch at this point.  We still consider ourselves a daily newspaper.”

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He said salary levels for the paper’s roughly 55 paid staffers are being adjusted, simply due to the fact that “there’s going to be one less print edition, which means one less day of revenue.”

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Here are Rainey’s words to me, in full:

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“We’ve been experiencing a noticeable change in the way advertisers are behaving.  We’ve decided that it’s in our best interests to rethink our publication model.  This means on Thursday nights, which used to be for Friday papers, we’re going to have sort of a voluntary sandbox.  Employees will be able to come in and work a normal night, but we’re not going to be bound by the deadlines we have for our print edition and things like that. . . . So people can experiment with some of the changes of what a new online model would look like or how we can do better coverage online.

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“One thing I’m very happy about is when we announced these changes to the staff, everyone was on board.  There really was a great reaction from the staff.  Everyone seemed interested in volunteering and being part of what I’m calling a sandbox because I think that’s the most accurate way to describe it.  What we’re doing is brainstorming how we can change our workflow– because one of the biggest problems we have is that when we set the pages of the newspaper at 1 or 2 in the morning all the articles go online.  In the Madison market, we think of ourselves as competitors to not just The Daily Cardinal [the other independent student paper at UW-Madison] but The Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal. We want to make sure when we find breaking news we don’t have to wait to publish it when the [next day's print] pages are sent.  We want to be able to have a constant, 24/7 workflow.

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“So we’re going to try for the rest of the semester to figure out what practices work best with that and what don’t, considering we’re also students, and see how it goes. On Monday, everyone who’s interested is going to be sitting down with me and we’re going to be having a brainstorming session. . . .

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“We decided to cut Friday because it’s the day when students are on campus the least. It’s almost like a weekend.  The weekend pretty much starts on Thursday.  But there’s still news happening, which is why we’re doing the online edition.  At the same time, we also noticed that’s when our advertising was at its lowest.  We had considered other editions that we might cut, but we thought in the interest of continuity and for the reasons I listed earlier, it would be best to do away with Friday.

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“This is purely a Friday switch at this point.  We still consider ourselves a daily newspaper.  I know that there are other daily student newspapers like this [printing four days a week]. . . . It’s definitely not indicative of any major problems that we have.  We’re just responding to changes in [advertiser] behavior and seeing what we can do to adjust to that so that in the next several years as things continue to change we’re not surprised by what advertisers decide to do or how the publication model works.

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[How does he feel about the paper's financial health overall going forward?] “I’m actually extremely optimistic.  Since we’re a completely independent business– we don’t get any money from the university and all of our revenue comes from advertising– we are in a unique position for student newspapers.  With that, you have to deal with some of the ebbs and flows of the economy and how the non-profit business works.  The reason I’m so optimistic is I think the entire process we’re going to be going through– with the sandbox on Thursdays and some of the experimentation we’re going to be doing over the next several months– is a way to make sure we’re diversifying and changing our business and publication model so that the paper can keep going and make it through some of these really momentous changes that are happening in the publishing industry.”

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Novelist Says University of Arkansas Student Newspaper Rejected Ad for Her ‘Big Chicken’ Book

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 29, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Did The Arkansas Traveler really turn down an advertisement due to its poultry perspective?

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According to author Sijin Belle, the University of Arkansas student newspaper “declined to run a pre-paid display ad for my novel, a satire set in a poultry plant.”

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Belle’s book, Big Chicken, purports to do “for Big Poultry what Christopher Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking did for Big Tobacco.”  The plot teaser: “Reluctant corporate investigator Greta Greenberry picks her way through a minefield of body parts in tasty hot wing buckets, crooked executives, skeevy lawyers, chucklehead rednecks, oleaginous clergy, hapless workers, gun-toting federales, and piles of dead bodies (not counting the chickens) to find herself hog-tied in a freezer face-to-face with a grisly truth.”

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In a message early this morning, Belle told me:

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“Tim Barger, publisher of Selwa Digital in Vista, Calif., submitted the ad for Big Chicken in an email Wednesday to [Traveler] advertising manager Elizabeth Birkinsha.  The four-column-inch ad shows a picture of the book’s cover and reads ‘If you ever worked at Tyson, you won’t be able to stop laughing.  This is your story– you’ve been there and most likely have done that too.  Check it out at Amazon or B&N.com’, along with available formats and prices.  [Copy of the ad below.]

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“Ms. Birkinsha replied by email ‘We will not run this ad in our paper.’  The paper did not respond to Tim’s follow-up emails, one asking for clarification and another re-submitting the ad with the word Tyson replaced by Poultry Xtra– the fictional company in the book.

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“It is important to note that Tim has placed a number of similar ads referring to other large poultry companies, e.g., Pilgrim’s Pride, in newspapers in other areas known for poultry processing.  These ads have helped drive our ebook sales in particular.  The Traveler seemed a logical marketing outlet because Tyson Foods’ corporate headquarters is in nearby Springdale and the campus is home to the John W. Tyson Poultry Science Building.

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“The Traveler’s current advertising rate sheet states ‘All advertising submitted to the Arkansas Traveler for publication is subject to review, rejection or acceptance by the editor,’ so we understand the paper’s prerogative, and that the editors don’t have to explain.  Moreover, it’s not a First Amendment matter.  But in my mind, the Traveler has committed a shady sort of prior restraint.

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“For this one-time news-hound, the idea that student journalists don’t want their audience even to know about a book (granted, one with a different view of poultry processing than students are likely see in class) raises a number of questions.  For starters:

  • were the students pressured directly or otherwise to commit this tiny act of suppression?
  • were they afraid running the ad would jeopardize other more lucrative ad sales or offend benefactors?
  • is this public, land-grant university a place that values a free flow of ideas and freedom of expression or not?

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“Obviously, I have a vested interest in being able to publicize my work, and there certainly are other advertising outlets.  But this episode is troubling in many ways, not the least because students of journalism– a profession in critical flux struggling to ‘monetize’ itself into the future– turned down ad revenue apparently for no good reason.”

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I have reached out to Birkinsha and Traveler editor-in-chief Chad Woodard for a response.

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Advantages, Disadvantages to Student Media Digital Experimentation: My Response to Steve Buttry Report

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 19, 2012 | 7 Comments »

College media outlets need to start experimenting with digital storytelling more often, more comprehensively, and more boldly, according to Steve Buttry.  In a new post for Nieman Journalism Lab, the news innovation guru (whose perspectives I’m really starting to enjoy) contends “student media have advantages that professional media don’t in experimenting in their pursuit of digital-first prosperity.”

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He is absolutely right, although the reasons he lays out all have roadblocks, counterpoints, and undermining truths worth noting.

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Below is Buttry’s complete list of cited advantages, along with my instant analysis of their validity– including the realities and disadvantages that need to be recognized.

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  • “Some student media . . . receive funding from non-market sources, such as subsidies from student fees or university budgets.”  (Yes, very true.  This funding though in many cases is attached to directed-allocation requirements, which probably do not allow for a ton to be spent on digital/interactive/website rebranding awesomeness.  It also may come with official or unofficial strings related to the continual publishing of a print product.  Not insurmountable obstacles of course, but ones that would require lots of meetings and end-of-year budget negotiations.)

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  • “Student media don’t have the high wage and salary structures of professional media.”  (Great point.  But a vast majority also do not have big budgets.  The little bit the students make through editor stipends and minimum-wage staff pay cuts into finances very, very prominently.)

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  • “Staff members move on naturally, so restructuring between semesters or school years is easier.”  (I disagree here.  First, student media restructuring needs to include input from students.  And students are not around between semesters or school years.  Second, the constant staff turnover within college media, ironically, negates mass change in some cases.  Students are inclined to fit into the system, keep it running, and hand it off.  Being involved in a major restructuring on top of all that is not what they sign on for when stepping up to run or write for the campus paper.  Should advisers motivate them to do it anyway?  ABSOLUTELY.)

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  • “Student media shut down or slow down for summer and holiday breaks, giving convenient times for making huge changes.”  (Very true. But these shutdown periods make a prominent digital-first existence scary as well as empowering.  The vast majority of student media are run by tiny staffs who work only during fall and spring.  Yet, a major web presence naturally screams for year-round updating.  As someone who visits way too many campus media websites every day, I can fully attest: Most student news teams have not yet figured out how to produce fresh content during the summer and winter breaks.  Is a dead site four months of the year OK with a digital-first operation?)

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  • “Student media generally don’t have their own printing operations and their related costs.”  (Agree 110 percent.  This is the biggest advantage, in my opinion.  Cut out or significantly cut back the outsourced printing costs and you can then free up money for digital wants and needs.  The key: getting your funding source i.e. clueless university administrators to recognize that printing cutbacks do not mean they should simply give you less money.)

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  • “Since most campus newspapers are free, student media leaders don’t get sidetracked by discussions of digital paywalls.”  (OK, but for how long?  Already dozens of high-profile student newspapers are asking directly for cash via pop-up ads or permanently-implanted donation boxes on their homepages.  Bottom line: Money matters are a factor, however small, within students’ digital mindsets.  Do I think mass adoption of digital paywalls will happen within college media?  No.  Is it a possibility though?  Yes.)

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  • “If advertisers in student media want to reach the student audience, they should embrace the opportunity to advertise in student products geared for the digital audience, where students spend more time.”  (I shrugged when I read this one.  I’ve seen no reports indicating student media are making any real profit through digital advertising.  Many student papers boast few, if any, online ads.  Can a digital-first push help increase those numbers? Sure. Can that increase make up for the loss of ad revenue from a decreased print product?  Less likely, at least in the foreseeable future.)

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  • “If advertisers just want to support the student venture, they can do that as effectively on digital media (and student sales reps can also sell the feel-good value of helping student media develop a successful model for the future).”  (See above.  Yes, they may want to support students’ digital ventures.  But they undoubtedly also want eyeballs.  And print still has more of them on college campuses.)

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  • “A weekly or twice-weekly product can serve advertisers insistent on being in print.”  (True.  But this is a daily-centric argument.  Most student newspapers are weekly already.  Is a cutback to monthly a viable option?  I personally think so.  Others may disagree.)

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All of Buttry’s mostly excellent points aside, there is one last ginormous X-factor that still looms as a major impediment to mass digital experimentation among student media.  People still love reading campus newspapers in print.  Journalism wunderkind Dan Kennedy: “I’ve found that the student newspaper folks like print even more than us old farts.  [The college campus] the last place on earth where the print model still works: free distribution in convenient locations to a largely captive audience. I’ve encouraged several editors at least to think about what it would be like to drop print altogether, but I can’t say I’ve made any progress.”

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Related

Yes, Students Still Read the Campus Paper in Print. I Repeat, Students Still Read the Campus Paper in Print…

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Collegiate Times Editor at Virginia Tech: Paper Does Not Support Anti-Muslim Advertisement

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 19, 2012 | 2 Comments »

The Collegiate Times at Virginia Tech reached out to readers last night, explaining the paper does not support the content of a controversial advertisement published in its current summer print edition.

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The so-called FLAME ad, created and distributed by the non-profit organization Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME), is a wordy treatise pushing what many agree is an anti-Muslim agenda.  Among other “facts” and perspectives, it purports there is rampant anti-Semitism and holocaust denial within the Muslim-Arab community and chides the news media for failing to properly report upon the “outright ethnic cleansing” of Christians by Islamic radicals.

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In an online letter, CT editor-in-chief Michelle Sutherland confirmed that while staffers don’t agree with the ad’s “underlying message of cultural hatred,” the paper needs the money.

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Sutherland: “[T]he CT is totally dependent on advertising revenue.  We receive no financial support from the university.  It is not as simple as saying, ‘We do not support this message, and we will not collect your money.’  We exist solely because people pay us to get their message out– especially in these economic times. . . . We fully understand the abusive nature of these ads. However, refusing to publish them does not solve the larger problem of cultural prejudices that exist in our country.”

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The FLAME ad has spurred controversy for a number of other student newspapers in recent semesters, including The Diamondback at the University of Maryland and The Badger Herald at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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In an editorial last fall, Diamondback editors shared their rationale for running the ad: “[T]he advertising department reviewed FLAME’s submission and determined it contained a subjective opinion– as does a page 5 advertisement for University Club Apartments, which claims the complex offers ‘The perfect fit for your college lifestyle.’”

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The ad has also apparently appeared at least once in a past CT issue– a fall 2011 letter to the editor denounces the false impressions it presents about Muslims.

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A screenshot of a sample FLAME ad.

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At present, at Virginia Tech, not all readers are buying the financial excuse.  As one commenter asked Sutherland beneath her note, “So you’re saying that you essentially whore out ad space to anyone who wants it?  Glad to know you’re that desperate.”  Another commenter: “So you essentially admit to taking ANY advertising money that comes your way – regardless of what it says or implies?  That’s a good way to go about things for sure.  Can we get a new school paper please?”

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Related

Virginia Student Newspapers’ Alcohol Advertising Fight Now in Year 5

Quinnipiac Student Newspaper Told to Drop Housing Ads

Northern Kentucky Student Newspaper Drops Resistance Ad

Holocaust Denial Ad in Harvard Crimson Causes Criticism

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Student Press Differs from Professional Press: Reason #1,333,668

Posted in College Media, Journalism, Student Newspaper, Teachable Moment, tagged , , , on July 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Our chief copy editor quit yesterday.  It was a decision that had nothing to do with the campus newspaper.  As a student burdened recently with financial strains, she simply cannot afford to return to the university in the fall.

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She had been one of our most passionate staffers– staying late, engaging with the words set before her and the staffers sitting around her.  She had recently undertaken the larger project of overhauling our badly-in-need-of-repair house stylebook.  Awhile back, she had discussed the upcoming year with genuine excitement.  All past tense now.  Instead, in the present, she is moving on.

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She let us know about her situation in an email.  It is a letter of resignation in every sense of the word.

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The whole thing strikes me as sadly ironic.  In an economic climate in which evermore news outlets cannot afford as many workers, a willing, eager student simply cannot afford to work for us.  Just one more reason the student press differs from the professional press.

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She is the second higher-level staffer to resign.  Our incoming director of advertising abruptly walked away about a month back.  He told us he had realized that his fall class slate and extracurricular commitments would hinder him from giving the position the necessary 110 percent.  I admit, my first reaction was muted anger. We had been grooming him for awhile and paid for him to accompany other staff on our annual sojourn to the spring CMA West Coast convention.  All of this was built on the premise/promise that he would be taking the ad reins in August.  Then, it suddenly wasn’t in the cards for him anymore.

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My initial grrrring aside, his decision ultimately of course wasn’t even remotely traitorous– and he even had the courtesy of informing us of it with some time to spare re: finding a replacement.  Students have a boatload of competing priorities– courses, clubs, internships, side jobs, a social life, a smartphone, naps, a workout routine, study abroad.  It’s always been like this of course (save for the smartphones), but it’s doubly ironic nowadays.  In an era in which tons of journalists whose number-one priority is news are being kicked out and left out, some students just don’t have the time to fit journalism in.

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 Just one more reason the student press differs from the professional press.

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Alcohol Ads Not Allowed in Campus Newspapers in Virginia

Posted in College Media, Free Press Fights, Journalism, Student Newspaper, tagged , , , , on April 12, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Happy hour is not allowed yet for college newspapers in Virginia- at least within their advertising.  One of the strangest student press restrictions has been upheld by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

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The majority ruling confirms the validity of a law severely restricting the rights of student newspapers at Virginia colleges and universities to publish alcohol advertisements. As the Student Press Law Center reports, “Virginia Administrative Code Section 5-20-40 states college newspapers cannot print advertisements for beer, wine or mixed beverages unless the ads are ‘in reference to a dining establishment’ and can only include words such as ‘beer,’ ‘mixed drink,’ ‘cocktail’ and ‘wine.’ Mentions of a ‘happy hour’ or specific drink specials are prohibited.’

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My take: The 4th Circuit judges need a cocktail- and a primer on basic free press principles. This convoluted law was apparently enacted to lessen the likelihood of underage or binge drinking by students. Seriously Va. lawmakers, sober up. Students drink, sometimes a lot at one time and sometimes before it’s legal- and it’s not because of alcohol ads or happy hour specials containing certain wording in a student newspaper.

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Students enrolled at respected higher education institutions should be trusted to discern that a newspaper ad promoting drinking does not mean they must drink. Campus papers need advertisers now more than ever, including from establishments that, gasp, sell alcohol. If student publications are allowed to write about it, they should be allowed to have advertisements for it.

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