Extra, Extra, Read(ership) All About It: Students support the return of the New York Times

Bigger than the font size proclaiming our commitment to diversity, the amount of financial aid that students are likely to receive, and post-graduation success rates, Conn’s website boasts a mission to “[educate] students to put the liberal arts into action as citizens in a global society” in a way—and stature—that you just can’t miss.
How does the college maintain this promise? We have an outstanding study abroad participation rate (55 percent), a student population hailing from 70 countries, and at the most basic level, a program that, almost daily, supplied the campus with the nation’s most prominent newspaper, the New York Times.
Until now.
Upon returning to campus at the beginning of the school year, students were disheartened to find that the Boston Globe, USA Today, and the New York Times were no longer distributed around campus free of charge.
“The papers are the reason why I get up every morning,” said Tessa Engel ‘11, an International Relations and Hispanic Studies double major. “What is breakfast without them?”
The Simmons Fund, a donation from an alum, previously financed the distribution of the papers, through the Collegiate Readership Program. However, the program was only endowed for three years, with no program instated to replace the designated funds.
Last semester, using their appropriated budget, the SGA’s Newspaper Task Force, headed by Corey Testa ‘10 and Teddy Fisher ‘12, funded an eight-week pilot program, supplying the campus with issues of the New York Times between October 5 and December 11.
In December, a campuswide survey was administered to access the impact of the program. Four hundred ninety-nine students, or roughly 28% of the college’s full-time undergraduates, completed the survey, which focused on students’ sources of news, factors leading to hard-copy newspaper readership, impacts of the readership program, and purposes of reading the newspaper.
Estimated from aggregate results, the survey showed an overwhelmingly positive response from the campus community. Usage of the Internet and hard-copy newspapers are almost equal amongst students on campus as the predominant resource to “keep up with what’s going on in the world.”
The nearly 500 students surveyed responded that they had picked up a copy of the Times during the pilot program. Comparing the results between “Prior to the New York Times readership program, on average, how many days a week did you read a daily newspaper (not online)?” and “During the New York Times readership program that began in October, how many days per week did you read a daily newspaper (again, not online)?” John Nugent, Senior Research Analyst and compiler of the survey, found that just 9 percent of students who “never” read a hardcopy during the program, from a previous 60 percent.
The most important information, however, was the “ways [students] used the information learned” from reading the New York Times—66 percent of students mentioned an issue or had a question based on something read in the New York Times, with 93 percent of students declaring to have had “a conversation or discussion outside of class based on something you had read in the New York Times.”
Amidst rumors of grade inflation and the faculty-driven Academic Challenge Report, the intellectual atmosphere of the campus is under some scrutiny. The results show that the New York Times has “had an impact in terms of increasing readership of a daily hard-copy newspaper on campus, and in providing fodder for academic discussion in class as well as conversations outside of class,” according to Nugent’s conclusions.
Professor Borer, Government Professor and faculty liaison for the Newspaper Task Force is among faculty known for requiring students to read the Times for her classes. “From a faculty perspective, the hard copy is simply invaluable. We have ample evidence that people retain much more when reading hard copy than reading something on a computer screen. If the hard copy of the paper is no longer made available for free on campus after this year, it isn’t necessarily the students in my class I’m most concerned about—it is other students who will most miss the newspaper. And, by extension, the campus as a whole will suffer.”
The impact of the Times, and the reader demographic, extends far beyond the Government and International Relations department. Amanda Eggert ‘12 tries to read the NYT every day. “I’m a psych major, so of course I read the Science section, but I also read Arts and the major headlines. I think that the New York Times extends to us as global citizens. We read the paper for the same reason that we study history—we need to know what’s going on in the world, what has happened and what is happening, so that we don’t repeat mistakes of the past and can improve our future.”
Out of the 495 students who answered the question about continuing the readership program, 490 supported doing so, citing six main reasons: that information on current events is integral to a college education, that reading a hard-copy newspaper is often preferred over reading news online, that awareness of current, global events is important to the college’s mission, that the New York Times is quality reading material, that reading a newspaper every day helps to foster lifetime habits of news consumption, and that reading a global newspaper helps to bring awareness of the rest of the world, especially since many students consider themselves to live in a “bubble.”
A small number of students had named several, predominantly financial, justifications for choosing not to continue the program. An anonymous comment made at the end of survey asserted that “anyone can read the Times online for free. Why is it important for the college to pay for the paper copy?”
Though the world, and thus the college, are accustomed to accessing the paper online for free, the NYT recently announced that starting in January 2011, “a visitor to NYTimes.com will be allowed to view a certain numbers of articles free each month; to read more, the reader must pay a flat fee for unlimited access.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21times.html)
Many members of the campus who oppose the continuation of the program think that students and faculty who want to read the New York Times every day should pay for it themselves or read the online version. With the vast changes to the New York Times website, however, an equity issue is raised: will students who want to read the Times be able to afford it? Does this give students with higher incomes an advantage?
Recognizing this issue, and the numerous others that the lack of papers presents, the Newspaper Task Force submitted an Above Current Level (ACL) request to the Priorities, Planning, and Budget Committee (PPBC) for half of the funds needed to continue the program. SGA plans to fund the other half. If the ACL passes, the Task Force plans to meet with an Educational Programming Coordinator from the New York Times to plan for the coming years.
The campus’ opinion of continuing the program is enormously positive, which the Task Force hopes that the PPBC will take into account when reviewing the request. “We’re hoping that the PPBC sees that are serious about getting the newspapers back and find them essential to their college experience,” said Testa.
Those in favor of the program are passionate about the issue and their role as citizens of a global community. As one anonymous survey commenter said, “Having the paper freely available on campus for students to read at their leisure is great for keeping up with world events and makes for a more educated, aware, and engaged student body.”