Campus newspapers are the voice of students. Sometimes that voice gets shushed, but rarely is it shut up for good.
In July 2015, the Imprint, the University of Waterloo’s campus paper, received an eviction notice from their student union, effective in October 2015.
Aliya Kanani, editor-in-chief of the Imprint, said the paper was evicted from its space after 37 years and offered a much smaller space in the basement of the student union’s Student Life Centre.
She said they tried to figure it out privately with the student union, but after getting nowhere, they ran a story about the problem.
“The amount of people who reached out when they heard about this from all over the world showed us how important print is to the experience people have here,” Kanani said.
Kanani said they received letters from people far into their careers, from someone at Hockey Night in Canada to people at National Post, saying the Imprint helped them get to where they are now, and they wanted to do everything they could to keep the paper alive.
According to Kanini, the official word from the University of Waterloo’s student union is that the space the paper is being evicted from will be used to create more study and social space in the building.
This is not uncommon in the campus newspaper world.
Ross Dias, editor-in-chief at the Underground, the student paper at University of Toronto (U of T) Scarborough campus, said they ran into problems when they printed something the student union didn’t like about five years ago.
“The student union shifted us out of our offices into a small room at the corner of the building,” Dias said.
The paper lives on, just in a much smaller space.
Student papers have had numerous issues over the years, yet they are masters of perserverance.
For the Quill, Brandon University’s campus newspaper, it was debt, said Alex Murray, current editor-in-chief of the paper.
“The editor-in-chief, who just finished, couldn’t account for $20,000,” Murray said. “We almost went bankrupt. We got a local banking institute to come in and hired a bookkeeper. That was very close to us packing it in and closing the doors.”
Most campus papers also publish their content online now, allowing for breaking news coverage and blogs. On top of the fast-paced environment that online news provides, it can also help papers stay afloat.
Sean Wetselaar, editor-in-chief of the Eyeopener at Ryerson University, said he believes the future of news is online.
“It pains me to say because I’m a print guy,” Wetselaar said. “Even this year I’m putting out smaller papers than anyone before me because of ad rates.”
The U of T Scarborough paper changed the way their paper functions due to their online publication, Dias said.
The Underground publishes all news stories online in a timely manner and publishes one print copy once a month, according to Dias. They publish their paper in a more magazine-like way, with glossy pages in a book format.
They increased the number of pages in the publication, but not the number of articles, which Dias said gives the writers “more room to breathe.”
Dias said he thinks campus papers just need to “keep moving forward.”
Another great aspect of having an online publication is the vast amount of reach the Internet has.
Molly Barrieau, managing editor of the Navigator, the Vancouver Island University campus paper, said having a solid website allows you to link back to the site from all social media platforms.
“I think that the website should be the foundation for the rest of the social media,” Barrieau said.
The Imprint hired a social media editor two-and-a-half years ago.
“It’s been wildly successful,” Kanani said.
Having a specified social media editor means there is someone who’s responsible for it, which ensures that the job gets done, Kanani said.
In general, Kanani said university campuses have around 30,000 students plus staff and faculty.
“That’s a community right there and it deserves to have a media source,” Kanani said.
Campus papers, especially independent papers, provide a campus with information they may not be able to get elsewhere.
“The student newspaper is important,” Murray said. “For the same reason any other journalism body is important—we have an outside look at the governmental bodies and administration, and we can comment on it without getting fired. It’s important that we act like that watchdog.”
For most schools, the campus paper is the only paper focusing on student issues—for the students, by the students.
“It gives a different perspective than our local newspaper,” Barrieau said. “We get to have more of a say in what we want to read.”
Campus newspapers may be changing and adapting to an online world, but they are not disappearing.
“Student newspapers aren’t going anywhere,” Wetselaar said. “There will always be a place for them.”
