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On Campus
Sep 17, 2008, 09:41AM

Breaking: College Life Sometimes Similar to Real Life, Part 2

Student newspapers are important, if imperfect breeding grounds for future journalists, public officials, writers, etc. etc. That they are threatened with the same type of ad rollbacks as the professional papers is a fact of life. But when this author states, "It's unfortunate. The Drudges, Huffingtons and other bloggers of the future could never measure up to the Woodwards and Bernsteins," he is giving up. He's giving up because for him, there is no world after newspapers. Forget that top editors from the papers he probably reads now fill the ranks of Huffington Post and Politico, forget that online media only get better with time. What is more depressing here is not that student newspapers are struggling—some will go weekly, or four days a days a week, some will die, some won't—but that student journalists such as this author see little (if any) light at the end of the A-section.

Many in college journalism - myself included - hoped that student papers would remain largely unaffected by the turmoil in news media. But apparently, when newsprint goes up 30 percent (again), everyone feels it.

These events have serious implications for all of us. Part of the problem is that traditional advertising has taken a sharp turn for the worse both nationally and locally.

The other, more significant issue is the rapidly changing patterns of news consumption driven by our generation. Over the past months, these trends have conspired to shake giants such as The New York Times.

And slowly but surely, they're shaking up independent student newspapers. The reality: Our generation didn't grow up with newspapers and we don't have a strong attachment to them.

Discussion
  • David Lei, of the Daily Pennsylvanian, might want to do a little research on newspapers before condemning on-line writers and commentators. Sure, Woodward and Bernstein are icons; not the same for the hundreds who tried to imitate them and failed. I don't care for the Huffington Post, for example, but I'm glad it's around and might get better and less shrill. The best student journalists, those who have ambition and drive, will succeed in the new media world. Romantics who harken back to a mythological "golden age" of newspapers, won't.

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