With the growth of online news consumption through websites and social media, NC State Student Media Board of Directors and Technician staff have decided to cut the production of the student newspaper’s print paper to once a week for the 99th volume.
Technician’s print paper currently publishes twice a week on Monday and Thursday and publishes content online throughout the week. Starting next academic school year, the print paper will only come out once a week.
Jonathan Carter, a third-year studying political science and editor-in-chief of Technician, said the decision was influenced by understanding how readers want to access and read their news.
“Basically, we are meeting the consumer where they want to be met,” Carter said. “We need to make it as easy as possible for the NC State community to consume the content that they need, and we’re doing that by going down once a week in print and focusing our efforts on social media and digital production.”
Patrick Neal, director of Student Media Advising, said that another one of the main reasons for this change is a lack of print newspaper readership.
“A student who reads a paper newspaper … there are a lot fewer of those students now,” Neal said. “They have been replaced by students who are getting their news online. Our online readership for Technician surpassed out print readership I think two or three years ago.”
Reducing the number of print newspapers Technician produces a week will help the newspaper’s staff focus on and have time for other work.
“From an editorial standpoint and my position as editor-in-chief, the main benefit I think from going down to once a week is that we can prioritize our time during production nights,” Carter said. “The amount of content is not going to go down, if anything, it’s just going to go up. We’re going to be prioritizing our website, our social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and hopefully start moving toward content that is going to be social media only.”
Neal said another benefit to only printing a physical newspaper once a week is reducing the amount of paper that is recycled by Technician.
“It is a lot less paper that we are recycling,” Neal said “That’s going to really reduce our footprint in that way. So, we’re going to be sending a lot less paper to recycling, which is always good.”
Additionally, the decision to reduce the print production to once a week was influenced by Technician’s budget.
“One of the main reasons … is the cost,” Carter said. “With the scenario that we’re going with, we are saving a lot of money by going down once a week and cutting our circulation to 4,000 [papers] per week.”
According to Neal, dropping down to a once a week print newspaper will save about $25,000 in printing and distribution costs only. Technician’s staff pay will not be affected.
“We are not cutting Technician’s personnel in any way,” Neal said. “They will have the exact same number of positions, exact same number of hours and that’s what the expectation is. While that one print edition is going away, that’s not just lost activity. That’s going to be redirected energy in other directions so they’re still going to need the exact same amount of people they’ve had in the past.”
In terms of Technician’s staff, the only section that will change significantly is the design section; however, there will still be the same amount of work for designers to do.
“The only thing that’s going to be different is, obviously, with making an additional print newspaper you’ve got a lot more of the design staff centered on page layout,” Carter said. “We’re going to shift design’s mission from a lot of page layout and a lot of graphics to predominantly making graphics. That doesn’t mean there are going to be fewer positions available for designers. That means the positions are going to be different and more centered on graphics.”
To accommodate the paper’s social media growth, three additional staff members, including another social media editor, a marketing manager and an additional video editor, will be added to Technician’s Editorial Board for the 99th volume.
Carter said that the only negative of dropping down to print production once a week would be losing the nostalgia of picking up and reading the print newspaper.
According to Carter, Technician’s production during the summer in terms of content will remain the same, but there will be no print production during the entire break as there has been in the past.
“As far as working there, the process, everything’s going to be the same except the making of a physical print paper,” Carter said. “Historically, Technician has produced once a week in print over the summer, we’re still going to produce once a week of content but it’s going to go on our website and on social media.”
Continuing his position as Technician’s editor-in-chief for the 99th volume, Carter said that he is excited to lead the paper into this new era.
“This is something that Technician is not only ready for and capable of doing, but needs to do,” Carter said. “I emphasize the ‘needs to do’ just because our community wants to consume news and entertainment and photos and multimedia and everything that we produce, not in a physical print format, [but] where they can access it easily and where they can get more of it. For those reasons, I am very excited to oversee this change.”
