The painful but necessary decision by The Massachusetts Daily Collegian to cease putting out a Friday print edition after almost 125 years is l-o-n-g overdue. In fact they should cease all print editions, period. And go all digital, all the time.
According to a Pew report less than 10% of people under the age of 30 confirmed reading a newspaper the previous day while, conversely, about half of adults over the age of 65 did read one.
But as those older readers die off they are not replaced by a younger generation of digitally native adults.
The average age of a UMass undergrad is 21, with only 7% age 25 or older. The math is pretty simple. Quite frankly, marketing a print newspaper on the Amherst campus is kind of like installing pay phones around the Campus Center. Or bringing back horses as a means of transportation.
The Internet allows instantaneous, unlimited, and wicked cheap news production. Embrace it!
16 comments:
No way! We love reading it! Everyone I know does. just not on Fridays because it's the weekend. You can't hang a digital version on the outside of your room.
KJ
Or thinking Amherst is a town without UMass...
Odd segue.
But the proud UMass/Amherst history major in me feels the need to point out UMass was founded in 1863 ... And the town of Amherst in 1759.
So what the Hell were we for those preceding 104 years?
Ha! That's a good point, Larry!
I've been thinking to make that point for awhile now. Amherst would be different without UMass - and it wasn't even UMass until 1947 - but it would be here.
I have lived in the area my entire life as did 2 generations before me. A few of us have been UMass students, but not one of us has ever worked at/for UMass. It may be the largest employer in town but most of those employed, not unlike many town employees, even live here. So, trust me. If UMass was smaller or not here at all, we'd be able to reduce our needs, therefore our costs, therefore our taxes, and live on just fine. Then we could be the 'visitors' to other communities with colleges if we felt the need.
I'm not a tree hugger but the only reason I can think of to make it go all digital is to save paper. As far as who reads paper in actual print, it's true, 90% are them old fogies like myself. In fact, if we all died off, the Gazette as we know it would disappear, as well as delivered mail (which is going anyway), boring people by complaining our aches and pains, and holding up traffic because we're asleep at the light.
But a free college newspaper doesn't necessarily follow the same trends that were shown in the statistics. I think the papers delivered off campus aren't read very much. But when left on campus a lot of students pick them up.
Yes, UMass on-campus students are a bit of a captive audience, so I'm sure the readership percentages are a tad better than the competition. And FREE also certainly helps.
Even so, I'm just as sure that the percentage of kids who pick it up and read it today are down dramatically from what it was twenty years ago.
I disagree- I graduated in '08 and when I was there almost everybody I knew would pick up and read the Collegian.
I think it's more popular than you think.
But the proud UMass/Amherst history major in me feels the need to point out UMass was founded in 1863 ... And the town of Amherst in 1759. So what the Hell were we for those preceding 104 years?
1: Embarrassing the Commonwealth, including voting AGAINST the ratification of the US Constitution -- and being outvoted by the then-other 234 municipalities.
2: Lobbying for handouts. A circa-1820 law required that the state university be built either in a town that bordered the Connecticut River "or in a town contiguous to such a town."
On a more serious note, Amherst was always a one-industry town, it is just that the industries changed. I don't think Cinda's folk were the first in the lumber business, then small papermaking operations along the Mill River, then animal hides (I believe beaver for hats -- and the genetic effects of Mercury poisoning might explain some of Amherst today).
Amherst was also the junction of two railroads -- with nearby Palmer being the junction of seven (and I believe one more that was never quite built). There was the still-existing north/south line, but more importantly the rail-trail was once the Boston & Maine's "main line" all the way to Boston -- and the railbed still goes all the way there, with talk of making it a bike trail all the way.
This railroad became less important after the construction of the Hussiac Tunnel which made the rail line that essentially follows Route 2 only have to climb to about 1100 feet (in Fitchburg) -- about a thousand less than any other existing Westward rail line on the East Coast -- and this was a big deal for trains. And when the B&M acquired this line, the Northampton/Amherst/Arlington line became less important.
The 1938 Hurricane came up the Connecticut River Valley and came after a wet year -- and so badly damaged this now-secondary railroad (major washouts) that it was never rebuilt East of Amherst. And as I am sure Larry knows (and they still have the old railroad signal by the bike trail) Amherst Farmer's Supply is in the old Boston & Maine RR Station, their pallets of masonry supplies where the old side tracks used to be (and some of the rails are still visible).
Amherst was damn lucky that UM expanded when it did -- otherwise, Amherst would have become a dried-up ghost-town. There is a reason why the houses that the then-college-kids bought in the 1960's and early 1970's were so cheap -- and they were -- the town was on the verge of collapse when UM saved it.
Without UMass, Amherst would still be a "college town." Anybody remember that college over on College Street? Am . . . something?
So it wouldn't be the ghost town everyone imagines. It would be a small New England college town with a lot fewer drunk-driving incidents and less of a reputation as a stronghold of idiot Leftism.
And then there's that one Hampden or Hamptown college or something down in S. Amherst.
Huh. Most of your post -- ostensibly about Amherst -- is actually about railroads, Ed. Are you a railfan?
It is amazing how much "research" and posting Dr. Ed Cutting does even though he's moved away, doesn't care about and even hates the town of Amherst. Imagine how much more he would write if he lived here or cared! And he must have a great boss to have so much free time to constantly post on this and so many other sites. Lucky boy!
Larry, printed journalism demands a different type of editing process than digital - you can't edit things once you've printed them. A print newspaper holds writers and editors up to a certain standard of fact-checking, reliability, and responsibility for the things they print which has - as of late - proven VERY absent in digital or broadcast journalism. The "go all digital" movement is inextricably tied to the "it's fine, we'll just edit it if it's wrong" mentality, and print media like the Collegian are the only true remaining bastions of responsible, planned, thought out journalism. I hope, for the sake of humanity, that print journalism is NOT crushed and that people of the future don't have to get their news from less-than-reliable media news outlets and bloggers.
Hate to break it to you, but they already are.
I'm not sure what you're insinuating, anonymous 12:05, but according to Wikipedia, from whom Ed has been known to plagiarize and must therefore consider a reliable source, "Obsession is not unique to railfans and being a railfan does not make one a candidate for autism therapy."
So there.
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