Reemphasis on Local Advertising, the Etownian

College newspapers often try and keep their message at the forefront of their organization by focusing the majority of their efforts on representing the student body voice, as they should. However, this often causes editorial boards to dismiss the importance of advertisements within the newspaper due to their use of space and the risk some papers face of allowing advertisers to dictate their content.

Although these are certainly strong concerns, advertisements within a college paper not only enhance the student voice by allowing the publication of more issues, but also allow newspapers to become more monetarily independent of their host institution, something that enables truer freedom of speech even within the confines of a private college.

This was my stance as I placed an emphasis on increasing our overall advertising within the newspaper, with a strong focus on local businesses. The connection made with local shops would be easier due to their knowledge of the College’s mission and impact, and would be a partnership that would be much easier to sustain than one with an ad agency or national advertiser.

Because of this, I slashed the cost of advertising in the Etownian by 50% for businesses within Lancaster County, completely overhauled our advertising team and instituted the position of advertising representative to the mix. I also instituted the use of an intranet system called Podio, with custom-designed applications within it to make it easier for representatives to access documents on the road and keep track of leads and sales to make the process a full customer service immersion, and not simply about selling.

The result? We were able to increase our overall advertising by over 320 percent within the first year, and our average advertisements per issue continue to climb in 2012. This has enabled us to invest even more into our team and our stories, with the confidence of monetary independence as a very real possibility in the future.