Student Newspapers in Dire Financial Trouble

I see it everywhere I teach around the country/world. Student newspapers are in big financial trouble and increasingly are moving to online.

USA Today notes:

Among the student newspapers facing hard times:

•The University of Connecticut’s 116-year-old student newspaper, The Daily Campus, reports it could face insolvency by 2014, largely due to big losses in advertising revenue.

•Film critic Roger Ebert, a former editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois’ The Daily Illini, appealed to his readers in February for contributions to save the 140-year-old student newspaper, which he said faces delinquent mortgage payments and $250,000 in back payments for printing.

•The University of California-Berkeley’s 141-year-old student newspaper, The Daily Californian, faces a budget deficit of $200,000 and an uncertain future after a vote this month to add a $2-per-semester surcharge to students for the paper was challenged and put on hold.

•The Red and Black, the University of Georgia’s independent student newspaper created in 1893, this year joined many other student newspapers nationwide in scaling back its days of publication, moving from five days a week to weekly and going to “a digital-first mentality,” editorial adviser Ed Morales says.