USA Today Collegiate Readership Program

... “Something happens to a young person before 18 that will develop the newspaper reading habit or won’t,” says Michael P. Smith, managing director of the Media Management Center at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “It’s hard to change that habit after 18.”

Publishers are trying, however, with university readership programs such as the pioneering project at Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pa. In 1997, Penn State President Graham B. Spanier began working with the Centre Daily Times in State College, The New York Times and USA Today to provide newspapers to students. At first, the program was confined to dormitories, but later expanded to other on-campus locations.

“Reading a newspaper each day is perhaps the single most important part of being an informed citizen,” Spanier said at the time. The program is funded by student tuition and copies count as paid circulation by the Audit Bureau of Circulations in Schaumburg, Ill. According to the Penn State Public Information Office, during the 2000-01 academic year at Penn State’s University Park campus, students read 975,321 newspapers: 427,029 copies of USA Today, 281,111 copies of The New York Times, and 267,181 copies of Knight Ridder’s Centre Daily Times.

Two-fifths of students surveyed said they never, or very infrequently, read newspapers before coming to Penn State.

While the Penn State program thrives, efforts by Gannett and other newspaper companies to duplicate the program at other schools have met with resistance from student journalists who fear that their campus newspapers will lose advertisers and readers.

In November, students at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette rejected a plan to distribute Gannett’s Daily Advertiser. Similarly, a plan to distribute Advance Publications Inc.’s Kalamazoo Gazette at Western Michigan University met with opposition. Administrators at Vanderbilt University twice decided not to participate in the Newspaper Readership Program operated by USA Today because of concerns about drawing advertisers from the student newspaper.

Some Vanderbilt students, however, support the newspaper program. Dustin Callas, president of a Vanderbilt dorm government group, told The Wall Street Journal, “[The local pizzeria] is not going to advertise in USA Today.” ....

- "Attracting younger readers," Presstime Magazine