The Minnesota Daily ends regular print publication after 120 years

If you had been on the University of Minnesota campus in early March 2020, you could have picked up what might be considered a collector's item today.

As the campus (and the rest of the world) shut down and went virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Minnesota Daily suspended print publication, announcing that there would be no physical edition of the student newspaper until in-person classes resumed.

Students have since returned to the classroom, but the ink-on-paper version of the Daily has not.

As reported earlier in Racket, leadership at the paper decided not to resume regular print publication. As the Racket article put it, "The print edition of the Daily was quietly killed off, never to return."

That meant that the last regular issue of the Daily, which started publication in 1900, was published sometime in early March 2020.

The last copy of the paper collected by the Minnesota Historical Society is dated March 2, 2020. A front-page story of that paper — with an apparent typo in the headline — announces "COVID-9 causes U to cancel abroad programs."

The copy is sort of a rarity because at the time, so few of them were printed.

The Daily used to be printed five times a week, with daily circulation at one point reaching close to 30,000 copies. But the paper wasn't immune to the headwinds facing print media everywhere.

By 2020, the paper was being published only on Mondays and Thursdays. Only about 5,000 copies at a time were distributed to the Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses, and half or more of the papers that were printed weren't picked up, according to Charlie Weaver, the executive director and co-publisher of the paper.

Weaver said the paper's own market research showed that more than 80% of the campus didn't know that the Daily existed.

"There were piles of copies that weren't touched, pretty regularly," said J.D. Duggan, a former Daily reporter and editor.

It cost $180,000 a year to print and distribute the paper, a cost not nearly covered by ads sold in the print product. As the pandemic wore on, the paper's leadership decided the Daily would continue as a digital only publication.

"Printing at a loss is irresponsible," Weaver said. "The Minnesota Daily made the best fiscal decision at the time."

The pivot to online only meant the money and staff time used to produce the printed paper could help improve the digital product, Weaver said. He said online consumption of the paper is growing thanks to recent access to the university's email directory, which means the paper can send an email newsletter five days a week to thousands of students, staff and even alumni.

"This is our new newspaper," Weaver said. He said on average, more than 20,000 of those Daily emailed newsletters are opened every day.

"The Daily is on the precipice of an upward growth trend line," he said.

Weaver said the Daily will continue to produce some special edition print products. They're planning a printed election guide, an orientation edition and a graduation edition.

Some alumni and current student journalists mourn the loss of a printed Daily.

"I think we lost some of the prestige and some of the legacy," said Jasmine Snow, a U student journalist.

"I think a lot of people get very nostalgic," said Drew Geraets, a Daily alum and current board chairman for the paper.

But many current students view the environmental cost of printing, delivering and then disposing of a print product as wasteful when they would prefer getting the information sent to their phones, according to Maia Irvin, the current Daily editor-in-chief.

"I do think the future of the industry has to be digital," Irvin said.