LSU’s Daily Reveille will no longer be a daily newspaper beginning next spring if the recommendations of a new report by the Office of Student Media are adopted later this fall.
The report, which has been months in the making, recommends decreasing the newspaper’s print circulation from five days per week to two as a way to stem huge losses the paper has been incurring for eight of the last 12 years.
“At universities across the country, the professionals and students running student media are concluding that a daily student newspaper is not a sustainable product,” writes Steve Buttry, director of Student Media at LSU and the author of the report.
The recommendation to cut The Daily Reveille’s circulation is part of a much broader strategy outlined in the report to focus on developing new mobile products and capabilities that will make the content generated by LSU’s student media organs—The Daily Reveille, KLSU, Tiger TV and LSUnow.com—available to a broader audience of LSU alumni, supporters and sports fans.
“We should start work right away on turning Student Media into a mobile laboratory, where our students experiment and develop products, serve our mobile community and provide important experience for students,” Buttry writes.
The report details extensive research into the experiences of more than two dozen peer institutions and concludes that universities that have cut back on the print circulation of their newspapers have improved their digital performance both financially and editorially.
The report also notes that while it remains an article of faith in the newspaper business that print advertising still pays the bills, “professional newspapers serve an audience whose median age is older than the parents of most LSU students.”
Only 16% of people aged 18 to 24 read daily newspapers, according to the Pew Research Center.
Buttry’s report stresses, however, that while financial considerations are the most urgent reason to reduce print frequency, there’s a bigger issue at stake: “To serve our community better using mobile media and to give our students the digital skills and experience the job marketplace demands.”
The Office of Student Media hopes to make a final decision on the issue in the coming weeks, but is encouraging feedback from LSU students, faculty and alumni. Comments can be emailed to Steve Buttry or LSU Manship School of Mass Communications Dean Jerry Ceppos.
There will also be a public forum to discuss the future of LSU’s student media at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 27, in the Holliday Forum at the Manship School of Mass Communication building on campus.
—Stephanie Riegel
