IDS adapts to industry changes, drops publication to twice a week | Local news

When Hannah Alani found out the Indiana Daily Student was going to reduce its print frequency from five to two days a week, she wasn't upset.

As editor-in-chief, Alani had seen her staff struggling to fill a print product that had fewer and fewer advertisements. Desk editors were skipping class to cover events that were barely newsworthy just so there was enough editorial content for the next edition.

"The first thing I said was, 'Can we do it now?' Why go two more months?" she said.

A printing contract with The Herald-Times and a few prepaid advertisements ensured Indiana University's 150-year-old student newspaper would continue printing five days a week through the spring 2017 semester. But Alani, after being informed of the decision by student media director Ron Johnson, would be tasked with breaking the news to her staff.

She planned to do it during Slash, the regular Friday meeting where the five most recent editions are evaluated and the next five are planned. Going through that meeting, using five different colored markers to write down stories for the next week, Alani started to think about how things were going to change.

The newsroom wasn't just an office, it was a place where students collaborated, ate meals and formed bonds. Without a daily print deadline, Alani wondered how often students would need to come in.

When it came time to make the announcement, she looked at all the faces in front of her.

"This isn't sad news," she said.

Then, she started to cry.

The decision to reduce print frequency came from staff members at IU Student Media, an independent auxiliary of the university.

"We have seen this coming for a while," Johnson said.

Anyone who pays attention to advertising sees how the industry is dramatically changing, he explained. And the trends are not recent.

Things were already changing when Johnson came to IU from Kansas State University in 2008. The economic recession marked the beginning, but other factors have caused continued revenue losses since.

One of the ways college newspapers thrived in print during the 1980s, 1990s and even through the 2000s was advertising from local businesses that served students, Johnson said. Many of those local businesses have been replaced by corporate retailers.

"If you drove around Bloomington in 1980 and you drove around Bloomington in 2017, you see a very different Bloomington," he said.

Some large corporations advertise in the Indiana Daily Student, but it's harder to connect with a company in New York than it is with someone who owns a business on Kirkwood Avenue. It's a similar situation with the owners of off-campus housing, thanks to a proliferation of small apartment complexes under corporate ownership, Johnson said.

Additionally, there are more places for businesses to advertise. Other IU entities have increased advertising at IU athletic events. Wrap-around advertisements can be seen on campus buses. Classified advertisements, once a staple of print newspaper revenue, have moved online with sites such as Craigslist. Students can even place free ads on the campus computer network.

"It's a much more competitive market," Johnson said.

The Indiana Daily Student has tried to address falling print advertising revenue a variety of ways. The newspaper organizes two student housing fairs and produces a number of special publications. Advertisers can target new students through the Orienter and international students through the International Student Guide. There's also a guide book for parents.

"They're important services, and they're also important revenue for us," Johnson said.

But they haven't been enough. A loss of $250,000 was projected for fiscal year 2017, depleting cash reserves to about $763,000. It was clear something had to be done, but options were limited.

The Indiana Daily Student does not receive money from mandatory student activity fees. Students working for the newspaper in the late 1960s lobbied for this to ensure greater editorial independence and limit university control of content.

"For many years, we were extremely proud of that, because with student fees, at some universities, come interactions with people who want to control the content of the newspaper," Johnson said.

He admitted there may come a day when the Indiana Daily Student looks to student fees as a way to stabilize its budget, but that independence wasn't something people involved in the organization were ready to give up just yet.

Cutting the print schedule was seen as a better option. The change is expected to save the student newspaper as much as $200,000 a year. However, it's unclear how long that will stave off insolvency.

"That's the million-dollar question," Johnson said.

When Jamie Zega heard about the decision to reduce printing last spring, she cried, too. As editor-in-chief for the fall 2017 semester, she has come to terms with the decision.

"We all have to adjust to the trends of our peers, and right now we're in a period where people get their news online," she said.

In many ways, the Indiana Daily Student has already made that shift. Sports reporters have been using Twitter during football and basketball games to update readers in real time for years. Breaking news stories are posted online long before they go to press. There's no plan to remove the word "daily" from the student newspaper's name, because new stories will be published around the clock.

A week before classes started, Zega wasn't sure what the daily production schedule would be like without a print product on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Fridays. Staff will provide input, but she planned to set online publication deadlines based on web traffic to hold reporters and desk editors accountable. Regardless of the medium, people still look to the Indiana Daily Student to find out what's happening on campus.

"Print is dying," Zega said. "But journalism isn't."