Future U is a multipart series on the university of the 21st century. We will be investigating the possible future of the textbook, the technological development of libraries, how tech may change the role of the professor, and the future role of technology in museums, research parks, and university-allied institutions of all kinds.

When we write and fuss about changes to (and the decline of) journalism, we almost always talk about for-profit companies. Sometimes we toss in Pro Publica to seem bright. But we never talk about school papers. School papers are throwaways, the argument seems to go, without a lot to offer grown-ups, and their struggles are not ours.

This coming school year, the University of Oregon’s 92-year-old Oregon Daily Emerald, first a daily student newspaper, then one with a website, will stop publishing altogether except for a Monday "weekly" style publication devoted to news and sports anchored by a 1,200-word cover feature and a Thursday culture and entertainment edition. The rest of the emphasis, effort, time and resources are going to be devoted not simply to a Web presence but to an information and media company called the Emerald Media Group (EMG).

Mad scientists

This media company will feature "real-time news, community engagement, photo galleries and video on the web, mobile and social media, new web and mobile apps."

Additionally, it will spawn a promotions and events division to sponsor political debates and other events, and a "full suite of marketing services that combines print, web, mobile, social media and street team services."

The shift from a college newspaper to a media and information company reflects the same pressures for-profit newspapers have been wrestling with and creates a possible blueprint for an effective response to that pressure.

The Oregon Daily Emerald, which operates as a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation, is now functioning as a kind of semi-independent journalistic laboratory, taking chances too serious for the for-profit world and, largely, for other universities.

Ryan Frank, the Emerald’s publisher, came from a background of "red meat journalism." A graduate of the University of Oregon’s journalism program, he worked as an investigative journalist for the Oregonian, Portland’s daily. He watched his paper fight for years against the local alt-weeklies, and he noticed how those papers’ approach "was always going to be more appealing to 20-year-olds, driven by visuals and storytelling, than inverted-pyramid journalism."

The younger generation's way of reading is part of a longer-term shift, both for consumers and advertisers.

The red and the black

When Frank worked at the paper in his college years, student newspapers were the only game in town for advertisers hoping to reach the valued youth demographic. Now, not only has social media provided a thousand paths for an advertiser to travel, it can frequently use consumer intelligence to reach out directly, with no middle man.

It wasn’t revenue that occasioned the decision to make such a radical transition, at least not in the short term. Although the Emerald gets about 80% of its operating revenue from advertising, it currently has the largest reserve since 2000. It has been in the black for several years after a series of cuts to decrease expenses. That process is what most newspapers, including college papers, are doing.

But Frank and the Emerald staff believed it would prove unsustainable in the end. Their three to five-year trendline had them heading back into the red. To remain viable in the long term, the very nature of the organization would have to change.

"The competition for the student ad dollar today," Frank told Ars, "is not (another newspaper.) It’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. This is about following where the industry is going, about how we train our students to do the jobs that exist today. Moving from a print-focused company to a more integrated approach made sense in the light of our three missions."

Although independent structurally from the university, the Emerald has a three-point mission for the students it solely employs to run its news operations. (The pros are all on the business side and advise but don’t direct.)

Train students. Half or fewer of the students at the Emerald will get newsroom jobs, but employers are interested in young people who can communicate and use technology to speak to their peers.

Inform the university community about important issues.

Run a financially sustainable non-profit.

By producing different types of news and media which will be distributed via a host of popular platforms, the new Emerald media company hopes to train employable students, including journalists for a new age. By modifying coverage and marrying it to specific distribution channels, they hope to increase their readership. And by offering advertisers packages that embrace all those platforms, they hope to remain financially viable in the long term.

Metrics and precedence

"This whole next year is a pilot project," said Frank. The Emerald media company will assess their success based on several metrics.

First, the old stand-by: circulation. How many physical papers are being picked up?

Second, Web traffic. Frank expects that to at least double to call it a success.

Third, advertiser response. Are more advertisers buying more ads as they follow their own metrics and determine the new configuration produces a higher ROI for them?

Finally, relevance. This is a harder one to track. Call it a combination of the previous three.

Large organizations are slow to change. Governmental organizations are glacial. Large universities are oil tankers–with a breaking rate and turning radius that matches its momentum. In fact, most college papers reflect that inherent conservatism. They all know things are changing, and not for the better, considering their current course. But few of these ships of state are changing direction.

Most papers are doing what Oregon has already done. Brigham Young University has reduced from a five-day-a-week paper to a weekly. So has the University of Georgia. The first place papers go, said Frank, are for the X-acto knives, usually cutting off the Friday issue to begin with, but inevitably digging into the flesh in time.

There are also other university newspapers that have seen the writing on the wall. Texas Christian University is beginning to experiment. UCLA is pushing forward a huge mobile experiment. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Arizona State are all starting to take chances, hoping to remake themselves in a way that will keep their news gathering operations valuable to their readers.

But a lot will depend on what the Emerald accomplishes at Oregon.

"It sounds a bit egotistical," said Frank, "but I don’t know anyone who’s done anything quite as crazy as what we’ve done."

If the loony move pays off, however, it could provide a blueprint for other college papers. But not just college papers. As "Editor in the Midwest," a daily newspaper professional, commented on Revolution, the site EMG has dedicated to the transition:

You have our attention. At my metro newspaper and all the others. We've been waiting for someone to wake up. Now, give it all you got.

The key to this whole experiment is the fact that the technological developments which have in part created this moment of crisis in journalism are the same ones that hold the key to journalism surviving it. In this case, tech can fix what tech has broken. The unavoidable complication, however, is that someone is going to have to jump off the cliff first. Looks like that’s Oregon.

Go Ducks.

Listing image by Image courtesy Emerald Media Group