If you care about the future of college newspapers- read on:

College Newspapers- beware the USA Today and the NY Times Collegiate Readership programs and the new Quadrantone on line advertising platform.  The Big boys want your college newspaper advertisers and they want you college newspaper readers.

If your school is approached by the Gannett/USA Today Collegiate Readership Program or the NY Times, I hope that you will consider this:  They will use their newspapers on your campus to financially beat your college newspaper into submission.  They can sell ads to your advertisers at a ridiculously low rate for a while to alienate your advertisers. They can sell local advertising with local advertiser inserts. They can even create customized coupon books that are inserted in the local and national papers they provide for your campus readers- Just another clever way to steal your college newspaper advertisers.

Read what is happening now at The Penn State to their school newspaper- the school that started the college readership program 10 years ago!  Other schools seem to be catching on:

http://media.www.cw.ua.edu/media/storage/paper959/news/2004/02/13/News/Free-Newspaper.Program.Here.For.Semester.Maybe.Longer-2860679.shtml

The large newspaper conglomerates want to get you hooked on reading their publications.  They have the same mindset as the tobacco companies- that is to say they must replace older customers with a new generation that does not read the metro papers if they are to survive as a business.  The only way they can get college student readers to read national newspapers is by giving them away (actually they are subsidized by your school administration or student government association). 


USA Today and the New York Times Collegiate Readership Programs have flatly denied in print articles that they want to take away your college newspaper readers. If that is the case, why are they lobbying almost every college and university in the United States, sometimes for years, to get their papers on your campus?  Every free paper on your campus takes readers and advertisers away from your college newspaper.  One can only read so many newspapers.

The USA Today and New York Times Collegiate Readership Programs have been cleverly marketed to colleges and universities across the country as a way to enlighten our students and improve the journalism skills of the campus newspaper writers.  On Feb. 15, 2008 a joint initiative called Quadrantone was announced by Gannett, The Tribune Newspapers, Hearst Corp and the New York Times.  This program creates an unprecedented on line advertising platform that will allow this newly formed oligopoly to offer localized on line advertising on their member online newspaper websites to local advertisers who have relied on the college newspaper to reach students.  With Quadrantone, even the on line editorial content can be customized to reach different demographic groups.

Here is the bottom line- This USA Today and the New York Times readership programs are nothing more than a surreptitious way to curry favor with students and administrators under the guise of providing a valuable educational service to our community. Make no mistake about it.  The goal of these readership programs is not to enlighten our students and broaden their perspectives as they would have you believe.  Their plan involves bringing USA Today and usually the New York Times on campus along with the local metropolitan newspaper (usually a Gannett publication)- They get your school to cover the cost of the papers- not the real cost- just a fraction of the cost- just enough to count each paper as paid circulation that will pass muster with the ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation). That way the large newspaper corporations can justify ad rate increases to their national advertisers.

Once the Readership program gets the local metropolitan and national newspapers on the college campuses, their goal is to steal college newspaper advertisers by offering below market ad rates to local advertisers and below market on line ad rates through the Quadrantone platform.  Gannett and the other large newspaper conglomerates share a common goal- encourage the college newspapers to sell out for a fraction of what they are worth. 

This is just the beginning.  The alarming fact is that the USA Today and NY Times Readership Program marketers have duped students and their administrators into thinking that their motives are purely altruistic. That should insult the collective intelligence of our future leaders. 

The student newspaper is in danger of being destroyed by a modern day Citizen Kane.