“So how are things at the Star?”
We hear that question hundreds of times a year from our loyal alumni. The short answer: The Star is healthy, students are changing and, nationally, the First Amendment is in some trouble.
By Maria Krull & Jim Killam Northern Star Advisers NIU marketing professor Denise Schoenbachler has completed a market study that we commission once every five years. As usual, students overwhelmingly prefer the Northern Star to any other newspaper. More than 88 percent had read the Star in the past two weeks, and almost 75 percent read it three or more times a week.
Trends in overall newspaper readership aren’t so encouraging. About 46 percent of students had read the Chicago Tribune in the past two weeks; just 20 percent read it three or more times a week. No other paper even hit 10 percent for regular readership.
A few other findings:
- Monday is the Star’s heaviest readership day, at 66 percent of students, with barely-noticeable declines occurring each succeeding day and Friday dropping to 57 percent.
- The Star is students’ main source of advertising for purchases in DeKalb, at almost 68 percent of students. Online advertising ranks a close second at about 63 percent, and cable TV is third at about 60 percent.
- A big surprise to us: Only 38 percent of students say they have ever visited the Northern Star’s Web site. And 93 percent say the prefer reading the Star in print versus online.
- About 26 percent of students own an iPod or other portable MP3 player, and another 25 percent planned to buy one in the next six months. We did anticipate this one, and for that reason NSRadio has been an early player in podcasting.
The obvious message is that, despite all of the Web site’s success and the emergence of NSRadio, the Star’s strength is the printed newspaper. We’ll focus on developing new media and staying ahead of the curve, but never at the expense of our core product.
The Star took several national awards this past year: First Place, Best of Show, and Second Place for radio broadcast (Huskie football coverage) at the National College Media Convention in Nashville; another Online Pacemaker award; and second place for the Trend Setter award from CNBAM in New Orleans. Our students won more than 20 individual awards from the Illinois College Press Association and finished second to the Daily Northwestern in General Excellence.
We saw almost 50 students graduate this year. Thankfully, we also have a great crop ready to step into those leadership roles. The new editor in chief is Derek Wright, a senior from Geneva, Ill.
This summer, we’ve implemented a new editorial software system called K4, which uses Adobe InDesign and InCopy. Our old Quark Publishing System had reached the end of the line, and with so many newspapers in our area preparing to switch from QuarkXpress to InDesign for page layout, we decided to stay on the cutting edge.
NSRadio is poised for a year of big growth. We’ve hired a graduate assistant, Deanna Cabinian, as station manager. Deanna is no stranger to the Star, having served as a reporter and editor as an undergrad. Most of the on-air staff will be volunteer – a move we made reluctantly, but with the idea of giving radio experience to as many students as possible without draining the budget. We’ll now feature live programming about 17 hours a day.
Again, under the leadership of sports director Mike Morig, we’ll Webcast all home Huskie football games and several road games.
NIU’s division of Student Affairs, to which the two of us report, was reorganized under a new vice president, Dr. Brian Hemphill. Now, instead of being grouped under University Programming and Activities, the Star is an entity to itself. The two of us advisers report to the assistant vice president for planning and resource management, Dr. Donna Simon. Our students have felt no measurable change.
Elsewhere in college media, though, it’s been a bad summer. First, the longtime adviser at Kansas State University was relieved of his duties – based, many believe, on content decisions made by student editors. These kinds of cases aren’t new, of course. But Kansas State’s student newspaper has an extremely high profile nationally, perennially winning Pacemaker awards. The adviser was recognized as one of the best in the country. What’s worse, a court has ruled against the student editors and the adviser in their claim that his and the students’ First Amendment rights had been violated by indirect censorship.
Then a bomb dropped even closer to home. A federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that student editors at Governors State University had no legitimate claim against an administrator who sought to censor their newspaper. It’s a long story and for many reasons it wasn’t a good test case, but the decision has muddied the water for college media. Unbelievably, the judges decided that a 1987 Supreme Court decision that opened the door for censorship of high school newspapers also applies to college newspapers.
Our response in college media has been to treat the case as an anomaly. Schools like NIU that can show a tradition of free student press, where the paper is a “designated public forum,” should be OK. Our administrators say nothing will change here and that students’ First Amendment rights will be respected.
Nevertheless, groups like the Illinois College Press Association have urged local newspapers to editorialize against the decision and urge the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn it. The Student Press Law Center has suggested that college editors obtain written assurances from administrators that no new censorship will occur.All of which makes having an engaged, active alumni group critically important. We appreciate your help in training and mentoring our students, and your watchfulness as college media enters a period of uncertainty. There’s never been a more important time for college students to do great journalism.
Telescope 2005 index
