Print papers vs. digital?
I am trying to gather information on how many schools still produce a monthly print newspaper vs. how many have digital versions. And how many have both? I am taking over next year and am trying to talk administration into a rolling-updated digital website through SNO with a quarterly (ok, starting off semester for first year) publication of less-timely, feature based articles.
My school is somewhat techno-phobic. We print way too many copies of a subpar publication that is out of date by the time it goes to press. Help?! Can anybody lead me to finding info to help me convince my school to go this new route?! Or do you think we shouldn't? All opinions welcome, encouraged.
Amy Summers English Department
Junior British Literature, Creative Composition, Journalism
I shifted our high school from all print to all digital this year using SNO - we have been very happy. We are going to actually print a dual May edition (print primarily for seniors) with a variety of special features b/c my staff raised the money to do so.
We are a 7A high school with 2800 kids, grades 9 - 12.
The school previously printed a costly print edition every month and it was not keeping up with the times or the news cycle and was losing readers.
Shay Elizabeth Hopper FHS Register Newspaper, Journalism, Photo, Phase II RM 1301, FHS
Framing Our Future District Facilitator, FPS, Phase II 3rd Floor office Author, An Arkansas History for Young People, 4th ed., U of A Press
I'm in my first year, and we moved from a magazine -- which was oh-so-expensive -- to newspaper. We are a 6A school, with about 2,000 students.
I have pushed digital, but those stories right now are completely different from what runs in the newspaper.
Every two weeks, every student in my yearbook and newspaper classes are responsible for a photo gallery, story, brief, etc., to go online. As a result, I've been able to keep the website populated.
However, I plan to move to SNO in the fall, but will likely continue to have a print edition. We print five times a year, focusing on features and more in-depth stories.
It's evolving. While the students get their news online, they love the printed newspaper. As long as they get the ad money, we'll continue to do it.
Joanna
Our program started a digital companion about six years (no pitching it admin; we made the decision ourselves and just did it). At the time, we still published monthly. Now we're down to three issues per semester. Our print issues is still more popular with our student body than our online issue, but we're slowly changing that by adding multimedia to our online edition and tweeting out links to stories.
If you can afford it, SNO is the way to go. WordPress is industry standard, but SNO comes with unparalleled customer support. Best of both worlds.
Kris
As Marshall McLuhan said many years ago, it's not the medium, its the message.
90 percent of your students, or more, are not going into any form of journalism. And even if they do, almost everything you prepare them for today are likely to be gone by the time they get to a career. Are you still populating your MySpace page?
It's the process that is important, not the form. Interviewing, researching, writing and editing. The skills they pick up from the process are transferable to any college, every major and every career you can think of. Critical thinking is not restricted to print journalism. Being able to express yourself well through writing is valuable even if you only write a paean about yourself on job application forms.
And there are distinct advantages to a print product. You don't have to compete with 8 trillion other webpages, or twitter feeds, or mobile apps for attention. You can hand the entire product to a student and get their undivided attention. Students don't need a computer or a smart phone to access the pub during the school day. Low income students aren't denied access. Best of all, in a world where you often have to fight for student attention and focus, you don't have to fight with students reading the pub in their laps under the desk while you are trying to deliver a lesson. You can wait until the end of class to distribute it.
Please note 1) metro papers are in trouble because their business model was stolen by digital media and 2) their major audience of baby boomers is literally dying off, but 3) digital books are now stalling because the public prefers print books and 4) most small community papers are thriving because in smaller communities people identify a paper with their community more than a website.
Steve
