I do not know enough about the revenue streams of the Daily Emerald to suggest whether once-a-week or five-times-a-week printing is optimal, but I do agree with many of your suggestions here.

I am especially optimistic about point number 1). Every year at the company I work for (IBM), they do exactly what you suggest: hold a week-long, participatory, on-line “Jam session” (They call in “Innovation Jam”). It is heavily advertised internally and to their business partners, and I suspect also some academic and public institutions as well. The idea is to get as much feedback as possible to see what new ideas people have, what the new future technology is, questions on management decisions, etc. It’s a very successful program every year, and I’m glad to see that this business strategy doesn’t just apply to large international corporations, but that it is a good idea to adopt at much smaller levels – even as small as a student newspaper. Not to sound too dramatic, but the world has changed – it takes new ideas from all parties involved to make good decisions. No one single person, or group of people, has a monopoly on wisdom.

The other suggestion that I think the ODE could adopt immediately is 1) moving to just black-and-white. I don’t know how much this would actually save for the print edition per issue, but it is a logical step that shaves the cost of production, and one that still does not hurt business partners and advertisers (they would, of course, disagree).

Good insight, and good constructive attitude!

‘Cause, if so, then yes, they oughta cut down. If not, then there’s no reason to get rid of a money maker until it starts to affect the prime product. If they can still make money off the print, but go web-first. It’s worth keeping a secondary product around.

Great point Joey, but that’s exactly what’s up. It can’t afford to stay a paper any more either. It’s not financially feasible to print once-a-week now, nor is it financially feasible to print five days a week now. It’s just like the United States being addicted to foreign oil: the Daily Emerald needs a pretty significant investment in it’s future. The other scenario is that they don’t and keep limping along until 2 years from now when they really feel the crunch.

For a as yet undetermined reason, print still works very well for the freesheet college media. Yes, we need to plan for a day when it won’t, but for now, it’s still the goose that’s laying the golden (well… maybe pewter) eggs.

I’d suggest that instead, they move to a web-first newsroom. Get them thinking of the print as a secondary product. It’s what they put out for the business side, but all real journalists at the paper are concern with the online edition first.

‘Course, figure out how to instill that mindset in a bunch of j-students that are still required to send in physical clippings for internships, and you’ve got a solid new plan for j-education that I wanna hear