Nashville’s NPR affiliate, WPLN, has begun the fundraising push to shore up after its recent purchase of WRVU’s broadcast license. As a marketing communications pro, I’m a little put off by the two print campaigns I’ve received in the mail this week alone. Surely a mix of e-mail, PR, and online advertising would have a larger reach with a greater ROI? Shouldn’t a mail campaign be more highly targeted—perhaps to people who gave larger donations, at a greater frequency?
But I digress.
The move has been much discussed—mostly complained about, from what I’ve been able to gather. That may be because I know former community DJs.
Last week, over at Fixin Supper, Laura wrote about the purchase. Her perspective is that of an alumna of the university and of a former editor of VSC’s flagship print publication, and she believes that the move is a positive step for Vanderbilt Student Communications.
We’ve been pondering this quite a bit at Yeargin Haus. You see, the husband and I both have print journalism degrees. We met while working on the staff of The Pacer, the student newspaper for the University of Tennessee at Martin. He served as executive editor for three years, and I finished my time there as business manager. I am very familiar with the challenges of keeping a student publication solvent. While the UTM Office of Student Publications was not a non-profit organization—though I had hoped, and still do hope, it would eventually become one, separate from the university, after this incident. The students were paid (not nearly enough) out of university funds from the activities fee, and the actual publication was produced on the back of advertising revenue.
In a small, rural town that lost half its population every summer, students—especially after the lottery scholarships came into play—had a lot of buying power, but they also didn’t have much variety unless they wanted to drive to Jackson, Paducah, Memphis or Nashville. As such, local businesses weren’t terribly compelled to purchase ads. One long-time advertiser decided to pull advertising with us when I tried to hold him to the terms and tried to collect payment a month after the ad ran, instead of waiting until the end of the fiscal year. Keeping the newspaper in the black without cutting page count was a challenge. One we met and exceeded, but a challenge nonetheless.
Laura wrote,
If this money [from the purchase of WRVU's license] is managed well, it can be used to safeguard the incredible, one-of-a-kind student media laboratory that Vanderbilt has always supported. VSC does not receive university funding. It is supported by student fees and revenues. With the revenue side of the VSC ledger likely to be just as precarious as any other print-based media these days, this is a fantastic deal.
I don’t want to presume to speak too much for my better half, but that was the sticking point for me. The traditional print journalism model is dying. How do we serve students, how do we prepare them for the reality of the job market, by propping up the model in a learning lab? The sale of the license is a good deal in a spreadsheet, but VSC can never sell that license again. It’s a one-time deal. What happens after the money is gone?
None of the kids that worked with us that last year—the year we were named “Best in the South” at the Southeastern Journalism Conference … over, ahem, the Hustler—are working journalists, as far as I know. Many of us took one look at the entry-level salaries for a reporter and promptly went into marketing or PR. My husband’s a web developer. There are at least two attorneys. Another decided to get her teaching license after spending a year and a half fruitlessly searching for a job she could support herself with after she graduated with a master’s degree in journalism. Hell, the newspaper’s most famous alumnus is not a journalist.
And that doesn’t even address the alumni that attempted careers in journalism only to be downsized as the media landscape changed.
It’s not a phenomenon limited to a public university in rural northwestern Tennessee, either … one of my husband’s coworkers is on that Best of the South list, too. (He now works in—surprise!—marketing.)
When the fourth estate suffers, people suffer … and not just the people who aren’t making a living in the careers they trained for. The lack of a sustainable business model for print journalism is definitely the biggest problem facing any college student considering a career as a journalist. It’s not a problem that will be addressed with a one-time cash infusion or with guaranteed student internships at WPLN. I’m just not convinced that more good than harm has been done in selling a valuable asset that could, properly managed, have been a source of continuous revenue through underwriting. I’m not convinced that students will learn more or have a better chance at finding employment after college by fighting each other for a handful of open internships rather than staffing an entire radio station together in a decent-sized market.