Management at The Daily Collegian, long accustomed to running the only free-of-charge daily newspaper on campus, said this week that Penn State's Newspaper Readership Program hurts the student-run publication by forcing it to compete with professionals.

The publisher of the USA Today, Tom Curley, is scheduled to join Penn State President Graham Spanier this morning at the HUB-Robeson Center to promote a newly beefed-up version the program.

The two-year-old readership program officially broke out of the dorms for the first time this week. Penn State now provides national and local newspapers every day to thousands of students who live off campus in State College and at 19 other Penn State campuses.

Students at University Park can pick up copies of The New York Times, USA Today and the Centre Daily Times at 27 new vending machines simply by swiping their ID+ cards. Penn State buys the papers at a discounted rate using tuition money.

Penn State was a pioneer in 1997 when it began distributing national newspapers every day to residence halls.

The program has met wide acclaim and at least 60 other colleges have copied it.

But some Collegian officials worry about Penn State buying copies of other newspapers and giving them to students.

"I do believe the readership program is a good thing in theory," said Patricia Tisak (senior-English), the Collegian's editor in chief, a student. "I do, however, think that it hurts student journalism, in particular the Collegian. . . . When you're faced with competing with the USA Today, The New York Times, as well as the local paper, I think it's kind of daunting for a college newspaper to face that."

The impact has been felt in the business division, also.

"We've had to come up with creative ways to combat these competitors we've never had to deal with before," said Francine Sadiky (senior-marketing and speech communications), the Collegian's business manager. "These competitors have large financial resources."

Collegian General Manager Gerry Lynn Hamilton said the student newspaper has not lost circulation or advertising as a result of the program, but has been working hard to keep things that way.

"It is my judgment that the Collegian must absolutely improve the quality of its operation and educational programs," said Hamilton, a paid professional staff member. "We must absolutely remain the top circulation newspaper on campus by a wide margin."

Although Collegian Inc., is run independently of the university, Penn State has a contract to buy a subscription to both The Daily Collegian and The Weekly Collegian.

Money from the university accounts for about 10 percent of the Collegian Inc.'s operating budget, Hamilton said, with the remaining 90 percent coming from advertising.

Penn State students have received the program warmly.

Jason Weiss (senior-English) said he's started picking up The New York Times every day to read at lunch in the HUB-Robeson Center.

Weiss said he used to subscribe to The New York Times at a student rate for a class, but it was too expensive to continue.

"This would have saved me 30 bucks when I was a freshman," he said.

A Penn State Pulse Survey taken in April shows students who participated in a trial version of the off-campus readership program were much more likely to read a newspaper.

The survey also showed students who used the readership program were still more than twice as likely to read the Collegian as they were to read the other newspapers.

"The goal is not to have anybody read less papers," said Penn State spokesperson Bill Mahon.

"We want very, very much to be in partnership with the Collegian," Mahon added. "The Collegian will cover Penn State like no other publication, and that will never change."

Bob Unger, executive editor of the Centre Daily Times, said the readership program has helped add circulation to his paper and build a relationship with student readers.

"It helps our circulation numbers, and more importantly than that, it builds a relationship between newspapers and the next generation of readers," Unger said.

He also said the Collegian and the Centre Daily Times play different roles.

"For us, coverage of the university is maybe less about what's happening inside the university than the university's relationship to the larger community," Unger said.

The Centre Daily Times and other newspaper companies have offered discounted subscriptions to students in the past, but the readership program is the first time Penn State has distributed those newspapers free of charge.

In 1997, Penn State began distributing papers to all the dorms at University Park, basing its program on one at Tufts University in Massachusetts, said William Asbury, Penn State's vice president for Student Affairs.

After positive feedback from students and faculty, and a test-run last spring with several thousand University Park students, the newspaper program was ready to grow.

"We have the largest and most comprehensive program for college students anywhere in the world," Asbury said.

The cost of the program is now built into Penn State's general funds budget and costs each student about $10 annually, Asbury said.

The program is also expanding at other colleges and universities, in part because of a marketing effort by Gannett, the company that publishes USA Today.

Penn State received so many calls about the program, Mahon said, that he set up a Web site to answer questions about it. The address for that site is www.psu.edu/ur/newspaper/.