One of the best years in Collegian history just ended. In 2000-2001 The Daily Collegian had strong performances throughout the organization — all four divisions, plus the Board of Directors. We sold ads, kept the computer systems running, delivered newspapers on time and deliberated well in the boardroom.

The News Division delivered the strongest performance of all — covering the news and providing a forum for campus-wide discussions. One of the most exciting news years in Penn State's modern history just ended, too, so there was a lot to cover and a lot for everybody on campus to talk about.

We continued investing a tremendous amount of cash in improving the newspaper, our operations and our educational programs. The total bill for all of those changes is well over $100,000 a year now.

So the year just ended was a very big news year that was covered exceptionally well by a much-improved version of The Daily Collegian.

Despite all of that, we lost circulation last year. That fact has our attention, because circulation attracts advertising, which pays the bills. One of the basic formulas of newspapering is:

No Circulation = No Advertising = No Newspaper.

So what happened?

Well, here's the story, which covers a lot of Collegian history. Many of you saw parts of this story firsthand. All of you have an interest in how this story ends.

At a 1989 meeting of the Collegian Board of Directors, Board member Richard D. Smyser raised questions about the circulation of The Daily Collegian. He asked if it was good that all of our papers are gone by 10 a.m. He said he was unaccustomed to a paper being "sold out" so soon after it "hits the streets."

Dick Smyser was qualified to offer an opinion about Collegian's circulation. He was managing editor of The Daily Collegian from November 1942 to May 1943. He was founding editor of The Oak Ridger in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which began publishing in 1949.

You really didn't need any expertise to figure out that copies of The Daily Collegian were gone early. Many Collegian alumni and other Penn Staters can probably give eyewitness accounts about having to get a copy first thing in the morning before all of the copies were gone. The scarcity of copies was a fact of life from at least the mid-1970s, as enrollment increased at University Park.

In an effort to meet the demand, we gradually increased the pressrun to a peak of about 20,000 from 1979 to 1982.

(The ideal under such a plan is to have one leftover copy, or return, at each site, a good sign that demand has been met. If all of the copies are taken at a site, we would have no idea how many more might have been taken.)

Accordingly, we tried moving toward a one-return circulation policy, especially at our main distribution sites, such as the union and commons buildings. But a financial crisis in 1982 forced cutbacks, which included cutting the pressrun back to 19,000. We switched to a circulation policy of zero returns, where we tried to get the most effective distribution with a limited number of copies, even as enrollment grew from 34,151 in 1982 to 40,969 in 1998.

Through the years, we refined the circulation system, which was efficient and cost-effective. The number of copies also edged up slightly to 19,300, which was the standard for many years.

The distribution plan for The Daily Collegian was easy to administer; either there were papers left over regularly at a site or there weren't. If copies were left over regularly, the distribution allocation was changed to move copies to a site with more demand.

The Collegian's distribution program was cost-effective because administrative costs were almost nonexistent and there was little wasted printing and delivery costs associated with left over copies.

The Penn State Newspaper Readership Program was first announced Jan. 31, 1997. I had no idea what was heading our way, and I was confident in our circulation program. However, it seemed prudent to check our distribution.

In February 1997, I asked our General Services Division, which is responsible for circulation, to prepare a daily count of our leftover copies. Starting with the issue of Feb. 10, 1997, a tally was prepared for 47 issues, including all of the issues during the last week of class for the semester. Following are some of the results, which I think accurately portray how efficiently we handled distribution:

1. Average rate of returns 2.14 percent.

2. 42 issues had less than 5 percent returns.

3. 33 issues had less than 3 percent returns.

4. 22 issues had less than 1 percent returns.

5. Average daily pressrun and distribution, 19,300 copies.

6. Average daily returns (copies not picked up), 413 copies.

7. Average daily circulation (distribution less returns), 18,887.

These numbers are incredibly good. Newspaper executives involved with Penn State's Newspaper Readership Program said 25 percent returns was acceptable in this situation, which was analogous to news rack distribution. The same executives also said that whenever the rate of returns is less than 10 percent, there will be unmet demand. I concur.

Even in this situation, with a limited distribution and unmet demand, the Collegian did a good job of reaching campus. Every few years we commissioned independent research studies to provide readership and marketing information. We have done five studies so far, by the following firms:

-- Belden Associates, Dallas, Texas, March and April 1979.

-- Belden Associates, May 1982.

-- The Blue Chip Group of Tequesta, Fla., March and April 1988.

-- Diagnostics Plus Inc., State College, Pa., October 1993.

-- Market Insight, State College, Pa., October 1998.

In each study, 93 percent or more of the students surveyed said they read or looked into a weekday copy of The Daily Collegian in the last seven days. Figure 1 shows some of the findings for the two most recent studies.

During Spring Semester 1997, Penn State conducted a pilot project, which delivered the Centre Daily Times and The New York Times every weekday morning to each room in three residence halls. Newspapers were placed on the floor in the hall outside each room. Students were surveyed in January and April 1997 — one survey distributed on the first day of newspaper delivery and one survey completed during the final week of classes. As a control, surveys were also distributed to students in two residence halls that were not involved with the project.

The Daily Collegian continued its normal distribution, which did not include deliveries to most residence halls.

The executive summary for the Penn State study stated the purpose:

"Continuing to enhance the educational environment is an important priority fundamental to the University mission. Being informed about the world in which one lives is one aspect of intellectual development. The goals of this project were to study the relationship between availability of newspapers and the rate of readership, as well as specific educational outcomes associated with being informed citizens."

The executive summary reported:

"Regular ('often' or 'daily') readership for both the local and the national newspapers which were distributed increased dramatically, while readership of the campus newspaper fell off slightly."

Students in all five residence halls were asked to give reasons for not reading a newspaper. In the control group, 65 percent cited "lack of time" as the No. 1 reason. In the experimental group, 78 percent cited "lack of time." Note that a dramatic increase in the availability of newspapers caused time to become an increasingly important factor in reading a newspaper.

The study also asked students "about positive educational outcomes from regular newspaper readership." Figure 2 shows the results, and these are incredibly interesting, particularly in view of the concluding sentence of the executive summary: "The relationship between newspaper readership and impact on educational outcomes is generally positive but requires more study."

After adjusting for the margin of error of 4 percentage points, the score would be no change for six outcomes, negative changes for five outcomes and only one increase. That one increase was "Feeling part of the university community," and I'll bet that was achieved by readership of The Daily Collegian alone.

Additionally, this research did not study or even attempt to study any actual educational outcomes. The research only collected data from students about their perceptions of educational outcomes. Those perceptions are certainly reality for the people who have them, but, in fact, they are not reality for the rest of us.

To pay for the program, Penn State added $5 to tuition each semester (fall and spring). At the University Park Campus alone that amounts to $400,000 a year. For the year ending May 31, 2001, the three commercial newspapers delivered 1,196, 794 copies on campus, with 18.6 percent returns. (Penn State only pays for the copies picked up.)

Throughout the process, there has been much celebration over how this program has increased newspaper readership and benefited the students. There have been meetings, press releases, meetings, conference speeches and, of course, more meetings.

Throughout the process, there has not been one word from Penn State or the commercial newspapers to celebrate what The Daily Collegian has been achieving for decades, or even what The Daily Collegian is achieving today. Last fall and spring, for example, The Daily Collegian distributed almost 2.5 times more copies than the three commercial newspapers combined. For the year ending May 31, The Daily Collegian delivered 2,936,203 copies, with 10.7 percent returns.

I have no doubt there are substantial positive educational outcomes from reading newspapers, and I have no doubt that an informed citizenry is crucial to a free society. The Daily Collegian still circulates more copies on campus than any other newspaper and more copies than all other newspapers combined. So we'll claim the credit for the lion's share of the positive educational outcomes from newspaper readership on this campus.

We've had many discussions at The Daily Collegian about the Penn State Newspaper Readership Program. We have looked for a "win-win" scenario, without success.

In 1997, when the students here asked how we should respond, I gave the following advice: "Publish the best damn newspaper you can, and do it on time." That also happens to be the same advice I've been giving for decades, and it's the same advice I will be giving next year and the year after that. We also agreed to take the Penn State program very seriously. We still do.

The academic year 1997-98 was an exceptionally difficult one for The Daily Collegian. We experienced unprecedented turnover of student leadership and key employees, the utter collapse of our advertising sales department, a crushing financial crisis and a long list of other challenges. On top of everything else, the Penn State newspaper program gave us one more serious challenge.

We were faced with dramatically expanding our distribution plan on very short notice. Overnight, we went from 10 distribution points in the residence hall areas to 48 — or from 10 to 76 if you consider we restocked 28 dorms. That expansion added a tremendous administrative burden and additional out-of-pocket distribution costs. This came right after I eliminated a full-time manager position in a financial cutback. That manager was in charge of distribution.

We hung in there. A lot of people worked very hard to get us through the year and to rebuild in the years that followed.

Starting in the fall of 1997, for competitive reasons, we increased our use of full color on Page 1 from one day a week to five and increased the size of our newshole. Starting with Week 10 of the semester, we increased the pressrun by about 1,000 copies a day to meet demand. Those changes, coupled with our increased distribution expenses, added about $60,000 in costs for that year, even as we struggled with the financial crisis.

By 1998, we concluded that our best response to the Penn State Newspaper Readership Program was to continue to do everything we can to improve The Daily Collegian.

Beginning Fall Semester 1998, Editor in Chief Bridgette Blair added a large weather spread at the top of Page 2 and a free-standing Arts Section with full color front on Fridays. We also added The Washington Post Sunday crossword puzzle for Fridays. We continued to adapt our distribution plans in an effort to counter the effects of the Penn State Newspaper Readership Program.

In 1999, Editor in Chief Stacey Confer and a redesign committee completed work on a new design for The Daily Collegian. The new design was launched with the first issue in January 2000.

In the spring of 2000, we concluded that our best move would be to intensify the strategy that we adopted early on. We decided to do everything we could to continue to improve our organization, our operation, the educational experience for our students and the quality of The Daily Collegian.

Following are the actions we agreed on (generally, all were in place by the start of Fall Semester 2000 and continued or improved during the following months):

1. Adding an assistant news adviser to strengthen our educational programs, particularly in photography and graphics, where we have been weak.

2. Adding a part-time specialist to improve training in computer applications for students in our Business Division.

3. Adding two part-time delivery positions (going from one person for each truck to two) to speed morning deliveries.

4. Adding delivery stops, increasing the number to 75. (The added stops: two before the start of Fall Semester 2000, six during Fall Semester and two during Spring Semester 2001.)

5. Purchasing new distribution racks ($6,000).

6. Using promotion signs on the distribution racks and boxes to help attract attention, especially at the beginning of a semester.

7. Spending more on promotion, including contests. We spent about $18,000 in new promotion costs, including promotional bottle openers, signs in the regional public transit buses, outdoor promotional sign near the bookstore on campus.

8. Increasing the amount of "house" advertising for promotion. (House ads are those we run in our own publications.)

9. Increasing the number of computer workstations to improve efficiency in handling the existing workload and to allow for an increased workload.

10. Maintaining our long record of excellent deadline performance.

11. Restoring a higher level of service from The Associated Press. (We had cut back in the 1997 financial crisis.)

12. Adding a full-color sports front for Mondays during football season. We also added full color for some sports fronts in the spring.

13. Adding a Science and Technology Section. In the spring, this became a free-standing section with a full-color front.

14. Continuing to increase our newshole, which allowed us to publish more letters to the editor as well as more coverage of the major news events on campus. We also added a full-page Arts in Review page with full color for Thursdays.

15. Continuing to improve the quality of our news content and appearance, our operations and our educational programs.

I cannot say enough about this. We got off to an extraordinary start in 2000-2001, the best I've seen in my career at Collegian. Day after day, every day, our students produced an outstanding newspaper, and they did it on time.

We experienced a year on campus with an unusually high number of high-interest news stories — the kind that tend to boost newspaper circulation.

Our news coverage included four consecutive days on a dorm-assault incident in Week 4 of Fall Semester, where a suspect entered 14 unlocked dorm rooms and assaulted women who were sleeping. The suspect was apprehended by police. The town newspaper appeared to ignore the incident, which emphasized how well The Daily Collegian covered the story. In October, we had reports of another male entering unlocked rooms in a residence hall.

The Daily Collegian also did a great job on the story about the Penn State starting quarterback who was facing a possible criminal indictment. On Wednesday, Oct. 25, a Collegian headline said "Casey's indictment hearing ends." Other newspapers said he was indicted. On Oct. 26, a Collegian headline proclaimed "Prosecutor: Casey indictment reports wrong." On Nov. 1, a Collegian headline said "Grand jury clears Casey of charges." Other newspapers reported the story, too, but they also were apologizing or explaining how they got it wrong.

And at about 2:18 a.m. the day after the presidential election, with CNN and others declaring George W. Bush the winner, our editors decided to go with "It's too close to call." Our editors got it right again, and that is pretty much how they've been doing it every day.

In both cases, they expressed concern that the professional newspapers had beaten them on these stories. But they stuck to their training and excellent newspaper practice: First, get the story right.

In September, two local transit buses were involved in separate accidents on campus on the same day with at least 19 people injured.

In October, there was racist hate mail, which took us a step closer to even bigger events in the spring. In November, there was a sex-education-oriented festival that sparked debates in the state legislature before the semester ended. That event, too, set the stage for major controversies in the spring.

Early in the spring, the Sex Faire controversy broke with a state lawmaker threatening to withhold funding for Penn State, threatening to ruin a college student's career, threatening the First Amendment and just generally making an ass of himself. In the face of tremendous pressure, Graham Spanier defended the First Amendment before the state legislature.

An injured Penn State football player walked again.

The men's basketball team surprised everyone by making the NCAA tournament. This led to a peaceful celebration on Friday, March 19, just minutes after Penn State upset North Carolina to make the Sweet 16. On March 23, Temple beat Penn State to knock the Nittany Lions out of the tournament. In the early morning hours on March 24, a riot erupted in Beaver Canyon, an area along Beaver Avenue dominated by student apartment buildings. The riot was the third in Beaver Canyon in four years.

The Daily Collegian published a superb five-part series on the Beaver Canyon riots.

In April, the racist hate mail erupted again, one day before the annual Blue-White football game, which is a traditional intrasquad scrimmage primarily for the benefit of the fans. The Blue-White game was delayed when students ran to the 50-yard line at the end of the national anthem in a non-violent protest of Penn State's response to the recent death threats. The protesters locked arms and huddled on the ground. Police removed the students; 26 were arrested.

The Daily Collegian added news space to cover the racist hate mail and the related events, which included a major rally against hate on April 24.

We also had a few regular news days, such as the Monday after the Dance Marathon and the day after USG elections, which drew high readership numbers.

You can easily find Collegian's coverage of all of these events and more on our Web site at www.collegian.psu.edu.

Some observers have said the competition from the Penn State's Newspaper Readership Program has improved The Daily Collegian. Others have said, it's about time Collegian has some competition. I offer three responses to those comments.

First, we've long had competition. A whole range of newspapers have always been readily available on campus. They can and do distribute anywhere we do, and then some. The town newspaper has undertaken major efforts in the last two decades to target students.

Second, the only reason we can make improvements is because we have the cash to pay the bills. We are not doing anything today that we would not have done long ago, if we had the money. We survived a crushing financial crisis in 1997 and 1998, and we've had three very good years for advertising revenue since then. Our Business Division worked hard to make a comeback, and the dot-com boom brought a lot of unanticipated revenue.

Third, if competing with professionals was really a sound approach for student activities, Penn State's Nittany Lion Football team would be competing in the National Football League.

Consider the past year in the history of The Daily Collegian:

1. A year-long rush of major news events, probably more on this campus than in any academic year in the last quarter century.

2. An extraordinary performance by the News Division, the best I've seen in my 24-year career at Collegian, and that is truly high praise considering our record.

3. A staff supported by more financial resources than any other staff in Collegian history.

At a time when we should have seen major circulation increases, our circulation is down 9.04 percent from 1997-98. That is a decline of 1,737 in average daily circulation from 19,218 to 17,481. At the same time, our returns increased sharply from 3.42 percent to 10.69 percent.

The academic year 1997-98 was the first for the Penn State Newspaper Readership Program in the residence halls, where it was already putting downward pressure on Collegian circulation. For 2000-01, if we had not spent a lot more money on improvements, delivered an outstanding newspaper performance and benefited from the big news year, I have no doubt that our circulation would be lower.

There could be other explanations, but based on the best information I have, I attribute the decline to the Penn State Newspaper Readership Program.

Increasing newspaper readership is a good thing. Doing it at the expense of a good college newspaper is a bad thing. We've made these points to Penn State officials, and we provide circulation reports to Penn State every week. Penn State steadfastly denies the program has caused any harm to The Daily Collegian.

In other words, it is just a coincidence that our circulation dropped the same year Penn State started delivering more than 1.1 million commercial newspapers on campus. You would also have to believe that all of the money we invested in improvements and all of the major news events in the past year did nothing to enhance our readership or our circulation.

The ending for this story hasn't been written yet, because we don't know what the future holds. I suspect we'll keep doing everything we can to put out the best damned newspaper we can, and we'll do it on time. Judging by the past year, we must do more than we have already.

In any event, I will keep you posted.