Penn State Experiments With Expanded Newspaper Program

07 Jan. 2000
Penn State University will launch an expanded version of its Newspaper Readership Program, Monday, Jan. 17, with a special effort aimed at students who live off-campus.

The readership program at Penn State, a model that is being adopted by many other institutions around the nation, started in spring 1997 as a way to deliver daily newspapers to students living in residence halls at the University.

The new program for spring of 2000 will allow a pilot group of 2,500 randomly selected Penn State students living off campus to receive free daily copies of the New York Times, USA Today, and the locally produced Centre Daily Times.

Using a special newspaper access card for the four-month project, participating students can gain access to machines that will be placed in the HUB and elsewhere on campus to dispense the three newspapers. Penn State's Newspaper Readership Program Committee, chaired by Bill Asbury, vice president for student affairs, will monitor the program to gain a better understanding of student interest, the effectiveness of the newspaper dispensing machines, the card access process, and the popularity of the location for the machines.

Starting the week of January 10 the University will contact the 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students who live off-campus and ask them to come to 316 Grange Building (863-1809). After completing a brief survey, they will be given an access card for the newspaper dispensing machines.

The students who participate will be contacted again at the end of the semester and surveyed to see what they liked and did not like about the program.

Asbury and his committee will use the results of the surveys and the information gained during the semester to determine if Penn State should implement a program for all off-campus students at University Park for the fall 2000.

Penn State's Newspaper Readership Program began as an experiment suggested by President Graham Spanier with approximately 1,000 students living in the residence halls in the spring of 1997. Information gained from that study lead to the expansion of the program so that all students living in residence halls at the University Park campus -- and at eight other Penn State campuses that have residence halls -- can pick up three daily newspapers. Students at the University Park campus continue to have free access to The Daily Collegian.

The readership program in the residence halls will continue during the spring semester and is funded through the room and board rate paid by those students.

Penn State's Newspaper Readership Program has a Web site with details about the program, participating newspapers, a list of committee members and information on the history of the innovative effort at: http://www.psu.edu/ur/newspaper/.