Dear Editor,
One of my favorite things about Union has been the Cardinal & Cream. Over the past four years I have read almost all, if not all, of its newspapers. Some of them have been absolutely fantastic. Others…well…let’s just say “Ring by Spring Edition.”
In what I assume to be an effort to keep your news current, cut costs, be technologically savvy and appeal to a new generation of readers, the Cardinal & Cream has abruptly gone fully digital. This sudden shift has left an entire demographic of students coughing in the dust. I believe that it is possible that adequate readership data has not been compiled or analyzed by the Cardinal & Cream staff and that this should have been a decidedly necessary step.
I have known the internet my entire life, but it has not always been convenient. As I was growing up, I read books, helped my brothers deliver the local newspaper, talked (sparingly) on a phone with a 25ft cord and played with Microsoft Paint on my family’s clunky desktop.
Interestingly enough, I have noticed that people who share childhood experiences that are similar to my own fall into a three-to-four year gap between the “Pre-Internet Generation” and the “Digital Generation.” I believe that the current freshmen and sophomores mostly fall into the latter category. These students have lived around laptops, painless internet and cell phones their entire lives.
Another thing that I have noticed since my freshman year is that the Cardinal & Cream has seemingly been incredibly wasteful. I remember playing NERF in Jennings Hall on Friday nights and hiding behind plastic-bound stacks of newspapers.
It appeared to me that the Cardinal & Cream over-printed the newspaper by around 100-200 copies each edition. I don’t know whether this was because the printing press required that they print at least a set number of copies or if it was because they did not truly know how many they needed. Either way, it seemed as though the Cardinal and Cream was wasting money on a product that was not being fully utilized.
I would like to sound a call for data. How many newspapers were taken from the red boxes after each edition was printed? On average, how many viewers (separate IP addresses, not view count) read the articles online? Comparing these numbers will determine which informational medium impacts a greater number of students.
I know that I do not remember to read news online and most definitely connect to the physical newspapers. However, do the members of the digital generation read their news exclusively online or do they also read print versions? I believe that the only answers to these questions can be found in the raw data. I wholeheartedly support the online version, however I think there is a large number of students who only read the print version of the newspaper.
Kenan “Old Man” Keller
Kenan Keller is a senior history education major.
Read a response by the Cardinal & Cream Editor.
