ASMSU looks to keep free newspapers on campus

---

Tweet

Free copies of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal might not be free to students next year, but MSU’s undergraduate student government might step in before the university stops the presses.

More people are getting news online, and the provost’s office believes this is a reason to discontinue its newspaper readership programs as a part of budget cuts. The programs include The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal in places such as Case Hall and Berkey Hall.

The provost’s office decided to discontinue the program in its budget cuts because students can get news in other ways, said Douglas Estry, associate provost for undergraduate education.

“We started looking at the need to find ways to be sure that we retained quality and student learning, but at the same time looked at better use of our funds,” Estry said. “We’re eliminating the readership program because we have the newspapers available to students in other kinds of formats.”

Most mainstream newspapers are free online, and the MSU Library offers online newspapers as an e-resource at www.er.lib.msu.edu.

“It didn’t make sense for us to continue to pay for the hard copies to be delivered when we could still make these papers available to the students, and more simply be having them go online,” Estry said.

Members of ASMSU said the provost’s office pays about $120,000 for its readership program.

ASMSU began its own readership program April 6 as a trial version of USA Today’s Collegiate Readership Program.

The papers are free to students and include USA Today, The New York Times, Detroit Free Press and Financial Times.

The four-week trial — which ends Friday — was free, but ASMSU has to pay for the program if it is to continue for the 2009-10 academic year.

On April 23, ASMSU’s Student Assembly allocated up to $150,000 to continue the program next year if the assembly’s executive committee deems the program a success, assembly chairperson Kyle Dysarz said.

The committee will review the program’s success by the end of May and make a decision regarding the program’s future.

Through the first two weeks of the trial program, about 27,000 papers, or 2,700 per day, have been picked up, according to ASMSU.

“For a trial, I think it shows that this program has extreme potential when implemented on a more permanent basis with more accessible locations that could be outside,” Dysarz said.

ASMSU has set up newsstands at 28 locations across campus. The Financial Times is available only in the Business College Complex.

On Thursday, students will have the opportunity to complete post-trial surveys at newsstands that will be used to determine if ASMSU will continue the program next year. Students also can recommend different papers to be used in the program.

If the program continues, it would provide about 2,200 newspapers a day to students.

Student Assembly Vice Chairperson for External Affairs Eric Branoff, who helped initiate the program with Dysarz, said the success of the trial disproves the belief that students only get news online.

“I think that this is moving from a generalization and showing that students and everyone else are still willing to pick up that paper and sit down and read it,” Branoff said.

If the program continues to succeed next year, the decision to continue it would be up to a student vote on a tax referendum. The tax would be between $2 and $5 per semester, Dysarz said.

“It is important to have a program where students, if they want, have the world at their fingertips.”

---