As many students noticed, the stacks of The New York Times that once decorated dorms and dining halls on campus did not return this fall.
The Undergraduate Assembly, which first signed on for a readership program with The New York Times in 2007, unanimously voted this summer to end the program and to consider other options for bringing news media to students. One option is unlimited Times Online access for all Penn students when the NYTimes.com paywall goes up in January.
The decision to cancel the print subscription was based on a number of factors, according to UA President and College senior Matt Amalfitano.
The discussion began early this summer when the Times approached the UA saying that some of its online content would require an online subscription starting in January, and that Penn would be granted free access if it upgraded its readership program.
The UA was thrilled to get such a great deal, Amalfitano said, but the Times retracted the offer a few weeks later saying that a consultant advised it against making such an agreement.
“That spooked a lot of us,” Amalfitano said. “They were going to provide us this product and then they just completely got up and switched it.”
He added that the Times never offered the UA any details on a specific date or price and that it still has no pricing model in place.
“It was unprofessional on their part, and nobody felt comfortable investing in them so much money,” he said.
For the program Penn had — which provided about 600 copies on campus each day — the UA paid $12,400, which the Office of the Provost had agreed to match. The remainder of the cost is made up by approximately $6,000 from other offices on campus. The upgrade to approximately 650 copies that the Times requested may have cost an additional seven or eight thousand dollars, according to Amalfitano.
“That’s a very difficult choice to make, but at the end of the day, the UA always has to put itself in a position where it’s spending money wisely,” said Amalfitano. He added that the pricey program had already come under scrutiny because fewer and fewer students were picking up copies from the stands.
Students’ reactions to the cancellation of the plan mirror this sentiment.
College sophomores Jon Roth and Michael Baresich both said they used to read the free copies last year but haven’t noticed their absence because they live off campus this year — along with an approximate 47 percent of Penn undergraduates.
“I get it on my phone anyway … I probably wouldn’t read it if the UA still had it,” Roth added.
College senior Chaia Werger also felt that many people read it online, and said she reads the news on her iPhone.
College freshman Gwen Lewis pointed out that because Penn is within city limits, newspapers are “readily available everywhere,” making on-campus copies a less coveted resource.
In place of the readership program, the online substitute is being considered — as online readership overtaking print readership “has been a pretty apparent trend,” Amalfitano said.
Associate Director of the Office of the Provost Rob Nelson said that the plan to look into online subscriptions, potentially including the Wall Street Journal, is backed by the Provost’s Office.
“The original impulse for the program was to facilitate access to the news for Penn students, and so I think the UA and the Provost’s Office and administration are really interested in figuring out ways to facilitate access to that kind of information,” he said.
Amalfitano believes that the online subscription to the Times, once available in January, would see more use from students. And, while possibly costing more than the print copies, the subscription may find financial support from other offices and organizations on campus because it would be more accessible to the entire university.
