“This is something we’ve been growing and preparing for for a while, because we all knew there would be a time when the Diamondback would cease to be a print publication,” said Leah Brennan, the paper’s editor in chief. “It’s super cool to see your name in print, but we recognize that’s not what people are reading.”

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And that has translated into perilous financial prospects for the Diamondback’s print edition.

“We’re beginning to see that this is the year that print profitability fell into the negatives for good,” said Tom Madigan, president of the board of Maryland Media Inc., the nonprofit that oversees the Diamondback.

Referring to the paper’s website, Madigan said, “The best use of our resources going forward is dbknews.com and our social media channels.”

In 2013, the Diamondback cut print production from five days a week to four when it stopped printing the Friday edition. By 2015, the paper was producing a print edition only once a week.

Meanwhile, Madigan said, digital readership has “never been stronger.”

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Dbknews.com attracted more than 160,000 unique visitors in September, Brennan said. Only about 5,000 newspapers are picked up each week.

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“Five thousand is great, but 160,000 is definitely better,” said Brennan, a senior. “We want readers to read our content.”

At its peak — from 1979 into the 1990s — the Diamondback was printing 20,000 newspapers a day, Madigan said.

Jessie Campisi, who graduated from the university in 2018, called the announcement a blow. She wrote and edited for the Diamondback’s news section.

“It makes me sad to think that something that was a tradition and a mainstay of such a significant news source and such a foundational piece of the University of Maryland and the journalism school is going to be gone,” said Campisi, a social media curator at the Hill. “It makes sense financially and media industry-wise, but personally, you feel like you’re losing a bit of history.”

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Weekday print circulation among U.S. daily newspapers fell 27 percent between 2000 and 2014, from more than 55 million copies to just over 40 million, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Estimated total daily newspaper circulation in 2018 was 28.6 million.

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Newspaper editors at Syracuse University, the University of Nebraska, Columbia University, Cornell University and other schools have also scaled back printing operations. Last year, staff at Syracuse’s Daily Orange announced they would print three days a week, instead of four. The move saved $30,000 in printing-related costs, general manager Mike Dooling said at the time.

The Diamondback has led coverage on national stories, including the death of Maryland football player Jordan McNair and the ensuing scandal that ensnared university officials.

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Student journalists earlier this year reported on the death of a freshman who contracted an adenovirus infection, raising concerns about the conditions of on-campus housing. University officials came under fire for waiting more than two weeks to inform the community after learning that the virus was present on campus.

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Kevin Robillard, a senior political reporter at HuffPost who worked at the Diamondback while attending U-Md., said he’s worried about what future students will miss out on when the print edition is gone.

He called the print publication a cultural artifact that marks athletic victories and other significant events.

And he’s worried about the reporters. There’s professional experience to be gained by putting out a newspaper, said Robillard, who was on the staff of the Diamondback from 2006 to 2010 and served as editor in chief.

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“The paper has to come out every day, and if there’s no news, you kind of have to find the news. It doesn’t allow you to take a day off, it doesn’t allow you to slack off,” Robillard said. “That, I think, is really good training. I worry that they’ll lose some of that.”

The student newspaper was named the Triangle when it launched in 1910 but changed its name in 1921 to recognize the university’s mascot: the diamondback terrapin. It has been financially independent since 1971, when the board that governs the school’s finances cut the publication’s funding after students printed blank pages to protest the Vietnam War, the Diamondback reported.

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Brennan and Madigan said they expect that print advertisers will follow readers online and will keep the publication afloat.

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The Diamondback will still publish print versions of popular tabloids, such as the back-to-school Survival Guide and commemorative Senior Edition, which serves as a send-off for graduates, Brennan said.

Even though the print version of the Diamondback will be a memory by springtime, Brennan said the staff will continue to deliver the news readers have always expected from the paper.

“We go after the stories no one else does because we’re the local media in College Park,” Brennan said. “We take pride in our work.”