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St. Thomas to kill campus paper, debut 'convergence' site

By David Brauer | 04/28/09

Next semester, the campus newspaper will be like the rotary telephone on the St. Thomas campus: extinct.

Touting "the first all-digital student-media convergence of its kind, St. Thomas announced April 24 that it would cannibalize the print version of the Aquin this fall to finance TommieMedia.com, "a future one-stop shop for student-produced radio, broadcast and 'print' media."

Student ad reps will sell the web inventory and campus p.r. students will promote the new convergence site.

Earlier this year, the Minnesota Daily dropped its Friday print edition to become, in editor Vadim Lavrusik's words, a "seven-day news provider" with a weekend online edition. On some level, St. Thomas is just cutting to the chase in the battle for the future.

Comments (9)

Submitted by James Monical on April 28, 2009 - 3:57pm.

Awesome idea. I highly applaud this effort. UST's ingenuity and close integration with the business community just might give the archaic print media community a business model for the new millennium, that just might make media successful businesses again.

Submitted by Russ Rogers on April 28, 2009 - 4:38pm.

The question is, what serves the students better? Will the students be able to get more information, and a wider variety of information and entertainment from an online student newspaper versus a traditional one? And will working at an online campus radio station or online campus newspaper give students equivalent (or better) experiences or credentials on their resume?

That's the function of Student Media, yes? Inform and Entertain the School's Community, while providing working experience (and even salable credentials) to the students working on it.

If a virtual paper gives greater access to more students at less cost ... where is the down side?

When I started studying computer science in school, I was expected to know how to do Batch Programming with Punch Cards! It was like learning how to be a Nuclear Physicist by starting out making fire, rubbing two sticks together. Yes, I think that computer scientists and physicists need to have some knowledge of the rudiments and history of their fields, but that doesn't have to be hands-on, working knowledge.

Admittedly, reading a newspaper isn't the same experience as exploring a web site. They are analogous but not all that similar.

Listening to wax cylinders isn't the same as listening to mp3 files either. Some visceral connection might be lost for the sake of convenience and cost, but I can live with that.

Are Paper Student Newspapers in the same boat as punch cards and wax cylinders?

Submitted by Mike Owens on April 28, 2009 - 5:38pm.

I applaud the focus on convergence, and the aspiring journalists at St. Thomas will certainly benefit from the experience. It may also be the best way to reach the St. Thomas community. However, this isn't necessarily the case at all colleges.

I graduated just last year and my college's newspaper was much more widely read than its website and light years ahead of listenership of the student radio station (which also streams online, by the way). The newspaper was waiting for students when they ate on-campus meals and proved to be a great complement to lunch or dinner.

As much as the death of newspapers seems imminent, there are a lot of smaller print publications that continue to be very successful. I think many college newspapers will be for years to come.

Submitted by Jason DeRusha on April 28, 2009 - 10:38pm.

I also hope that St. Thomas will continue to teach how to layout a physical newspaper. Even though many jobs in the future will be web only, that's not the situation today. I'm always amused at all the college grads who come out only having edited on computers -- and then they get real jobs and have to edit on physical tape decks, making straight cuts.

As much as colleges are and should be labs for the future, it wouldn't hurt to continue to teach a little bit about how to get a job NOW. (If I were an advertiser, I'd expect to pay far less to be on the school news website, incidentally. Just like in the real world.)

Submitted by Tom Weyandt on April 29, 2009 - 12:46pm.

I fondly remember the days down in the "pit" counting headlines and trying to stuff too much copy into small spaces. Then working on the stone down at North Central Printing with real printers was great experience also. The chance to interact with Vadnie, Effengberger, Macalus, Magoo, Dick Parker and others added a lot to both my education and my relatinships. I'm not sure that can be accomplished staring at a monitor.

But perhaps a dinosaur must fade away into silence. It’s obvious that the days of a paper newspaper are nearly over but the skills and experience are still going to be needed and valued.

Farewell Aquin.

Submitted by Logan Aimone on April 29, 2009 - 1:54pm.

This development is rooted in the financial reality along with the increase in readers going online and the potential career market. College media face increased costs and decreased revenues much like commercial outlets. However, college newspapers are still very widely read on campuses, much moreso than digital counterparts. A 2008 study published by Alloy Media + Marketing showed 76 percent of students had read their campus paper in the past month -- even higher for daily campus papers. Perhaps that'll change with more students going online to find the St. Thomas news via their laptops or mobile devices.

In a niche market with lots of on-campus students, a print newspaper is still a very effective communications tool. I applaud the Aquin staff for leading the way and really working hard to converge multiple news outlets.

There are some good models out there, including KentNewsNet.com at Kent State University and the217.com at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Maybe the Aquin will join that club.

Submitted by Mike Keliher on April 30, 2009 - 8:15am.

I, too, remember fondly my days as an editor at the Aquin. Hopefully the new experience will be just as exciting for the folks working on tommiemedia.com.

DeRusha makes a great point above, except for one thing: The Aquin doesn't (or at least, didn't; might have changed recently) run any ads.

Submitted by Doug Hamlin on April 30, 2009 - 2:11pm.

I have to disagree that "the chase" in this case is death of printed college media. The Minnesota Daily cut the Friday edition because most U students don't have Friday classes, which means no one picking up the paper and no advertising demand. (Back when I spent my Thursday nights editing and laying out the Friday Daily I always had a sense that it was all for naught.)

But Monday through Thursday the Daily (and other daily college papers) has something metro dailies can't claim: a captive audience. I don't know how the revenue vs. expenses looks for those days, but maybe Vadim will shed some light on that?

To DeRusha's point about schools still teaching layout, I think they've already stopped. At the U, I only had one class that even touched on news design/layout (taught by the illustrious G.R. Anderson Jr.), but it wasn't even the focus. I didn't learn how to really layout a good news page until I worked at the Daily.

And while I'm on the subject of the Daily and design, I'll just throw in here that college papers need to be bolder in their design approaches. I'd like to see a lot more use of the concept cover (think the kind of thing you see on the cover of The Economist every week).

Submitted by nate minor on April 30, 2009 - 2:13pm.

"I applaud the Aquin staff for leading the way and really working hard to converge multiple news outlets."...Unfortunately, the Aquin staff learned about the switch to an online format only a few weeks ago. Apparently, the project has been in the works for a year and a half.

As far as readership goes, I'm sure it will suffer, but the content will definitely improve. The paper only publishes every Thursday, with the stories in that issue being due the previous Sunday.

This means we get a lot of old news, which has increasingly become recaps of events on campus that happened weeks before. People read the Aquin, but, at least in my experiences as a student, only glance at the headlines before a class and toss it.

I have to believe it's because the content is outdated even before it's printed, and it's usually pretty mundane stuff. Whisper the word 'investigative reporting' around here and you'll get a lot of strange looks.

Tommiemedia.com should have more up-to-date stories, but I'm concerned that the students won't be given the autonomy necessary to really make the enterprise successful.