Rumors of Minnesota Daily's death are exaggerated

In late October, a few days after a mild racket on Twitter about the Minnesota Daily's decision to end its print edition for good, I flew to Washington to meet with the students who still make the Daily happen.

They do it every day. Sometimes 24 hours a day. Seven days a week.

And contrary to the hand-wringing and alarming tweets about the death of its daily paper edition, the Minnesota Daily appeared to be very much alive.

The Daily was being inducted into the Associated Collegiate Press's Hall of Fame for its consistent award-winning performance at the national level. The students were proud. For the past couple of years they had labored together, sometimes on Zoom, to cover campus via a website, podcasts, special sections and an email newsletter that can now reach 66,000 students, faculty and staff.

I understand the yearning for the bygone days when collegiate print newspapers were miraculously assembled night after night for a daily readership. I understand the camaraderie and character that grew from those experiences. At my college newsroom, finishing a print edition usually meant a 2 a.m. trip to Tommy's at Beverly and Rampart in Los Angeles for chili burgers. Those bonds are precious.

But we also need to be careful about the collateral damage of such nostalgia on an upcoming generation of student journalists. It's a disservice to those who have courageously guided the Daily's transition from print to digital. It's also disheartening to those who look to the Daily as an opportunity to build their college journalism experience today. We should be careful not to muddle our experiences with their realities.

Here's some reality: The overwhelming trend among colleges has been to reduce daily print publication significantly if not abandon it entirely. The pandemic hastened this. "There are very few print editions that are daily in college newspapers today. They are just gone," said Ron Johnson, a longtime college media adviser and now communications director for the Associated Collegiate Press. "And it's not because people don't care. Students today are just as committed." In fact, he said, across the country student journalists are working harder than ever, running the 24/7 news operations that digital news gathering demands.

Here's more reality: If the Minnesota Daily had held on to its daily print product, it wouldn't have survived for long. It would have bled out its cash reserves all over the streets of Dinkytown and Stadium Village to cover the ad revenue shortfalls. The university's roughly $500,000 in annual support from student service fees would not have been enough to sustain a print operation.

I know this because I was there. Since 2008, I have served with professionals and student leaders on the Daily's board of directors. We watched the operation's revenue plummet.

We saw those student leaders wisely identify the contributing realities: that most on campus were bypassing the newsstands, that return rates were north of 60%, that smartphones became ubiquitous and that Gen Zers were avoiding the paper product because of concerns about the environment. Other board members and I helped student leaders hold the tourniquet during the most terrifying years. We watched the students rebuild the Daily toward a digital future.

When the pandemic closed campus and students left, it made sense to cease the already-reduced, twice-a-week daily print edition. When campus reopened, it made sense to publish special sections but not the daily paper — yet. This year, when the question of reviving a daily print edition came up again, the students' answer was unanimous: Let it go for good. That finality was only remarkable because it was an unremarkable moment.

Anyone who knows the newspaper business knows that managing a transition from print to digital is never clear or easy. Nothing will be as clear or easy as the romantic days of working for a newsroom in the 1980s, 1990s or even early 2000s, when operating margins were fat and income statements forgiving. One more reality is that the Daily's future is still uncertain. It will have to rely on special sections or other forms of revenue generation, including philanthropy, if it's going to survive. The economics of news gathering is as tough on college campuses as it is for media companies all over the United States.

But those who care about supporting future journalists might consider the value of looking beyond their memories and seeing what today's amazing students are doing to keep the Minnesota Daily relevant to readers. The good news is that anyone can get access to the Daily easily via the email newsletter or the website. They don't even have to pick it up outside a classroom building.

Gayle Golden is Charnley Professor and a senior lecturer at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota and secretary of the Minnesota Daily's board of directors.