Even while in Iraq, two former University of Iowa students are keeping up with daily news on the UI campus.
They are doing so through a new service The Daily Iowan offers through a company called NewsStand, Inc. NewsStand delivers a duplicate of the print version of many publications directly to your computer.
The Daily Iowan became the first college newspaper to offer the service when it began the service during the fall 2004 semester. It offers free service to UI students and faculty, but for the public a one-year subscription costs $50.
However, DI publisher Bill Casey said the service will be upgraded starting in the spring semester. The service will not only be free to all, but service will be expanded to include Macintosh computers, which previously were not compatible with the program.
Casey is pleased that the program will be free to all. He sees the service as a great way to reach UI alumni and students studying abroad who want to stay current on local events.
“Let’s say you’re going to Europe to study abroad for a semester and you’re a student of The University of Iowa. It’s nice to be able to read The Daily Iowan each day,” he said.
Casey met with NewsStand at the Western Association of University Publication Managers convention in Honolulu, Hawaii. NewsStand was selecting up to 10 college newspapers with whom to try the program.
“I got back to them the day after I got back and that’s how we got on first, because we got back to them the quickest,” Casey said.
Currently four college newspapers can be found at NewsStand: The Daily Iowan, The Daily Texan, The Northwestern Daily and The Daily Universe (of BYU). Eight more college newspapers will be involved with the program by spring, Casey said.
“I think it’s very prestigious,” editor Tony Robinson said of the DI being included in the NewsStand program.
“I wouldn’t say we model ourselves after any newspaper, but we do shoot for the best, and The New York Times is on NewsStand.”
The DI has yet to get a big response to the NewsStand service, however. It has around 100 NewsStand subscribers, compared to an average of 10,000 daily online edition readers.
“I’m sure some of the (Daily Iowan) staff are part of that 100,” Robinson said. “And they really like it. Outside of the staff I haven’t really heard much about it.”
The NewsStand version of the DI is identical to the print version. This gives readers the opportunity to see exactly what the page looks like, something the readers don’t get with a newspaper’s Web site.
“If you go online, you click on a thread and you don’t have the feeling of a newspaper,” said Bob Foley, DI night production manager.
“With this you get the ads and the feeling of a newspaper.”
Each night after sending The Daily Iowan to The Gazette for printing, Foley electronically uploads the pages of the newspaper to the NewsStand Web site. It’s a process that takes just 5-10 minutes.
“It’s the way I kind of always envisioned a newspaper would look on a computer,” Foley said.
The NewsStand edition of a newspaper even has the potential to merge print journalism with other types of media.
“If you go into that Web site and look at Texas Magazine, you’ll see a story and you can click on part of that story and get part of that interview. You can get audio and video,” Casey said.
The online version of the newspaper will never completely take over. Some people still like to get some newsprint on their hands.
“Personally, I like to pick up a physical copy,” Robinson said. “I read it online too.”
During the fall 2004 semester, the NewsStand copy of The Daily Iowan was the affordable way to subscribe to the newspaper if you lived outside Iowa City. The digital copy of the newspaper cost $50 a year, while a subscription to the print copy is $95 a year.
“It’s like double the price and then it takes 2-3 days to get it,” Robinson said. “With the online copy, it’s updated every morning at like six o’clock.”
However, only two people took the DI up on the offer: the former students in Iraq.
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Daily Iowan staying put for right now
While the rest of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication eagerly moves into the Adler Building, The Daily Iowan will sit on
the sidelines. The Daily Iowan will not move into the new state-of-the-art building until May.
The first floor, which will be home to the college newspaper, will not be done in time for The Daily Iowan to move in and get acclimated to the building before the spring semester begins.
“We just found out,” said editor Tony Robinson. “It was unfortunate. But I understand because they had things to get worked out.”
A January move into the Adler Building wasn’t going to leave enough time to train The Daily Iowan staff on the new software on new newsroom computers. The training takes 10 days, which will now be broken up into several sessions during the spring semester.
Publisher Bill Casey said the later move into the building is not necessarily a bad thing, and will allow The Daily Iowan staff to ease its way into the new surroundings.
“We’ll have the summer to tweak the newsroom, rather than the second semester,” he said. “And the summer is much mellower.”
In the end, Casey said The Daily Iowan couldn’t take any chances of moving and not being ready to produce a newspaper at the beginning of the spring semester.
“I wish we were moving, but we can’t take the chance of not being published,” he said.
— Travis Brown |
