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Written by John Beale
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Monday, 20 April 2009 05:23 |
Actions speak louder than words: even The Collegian thinks The Collegian is rubbish.
The Massachusetts Daily Collegian claims a daily circulation of 14,000 copies/day, but The Minuteman has learned that this number is greatly exaggerated.
Nearly every night for the last two weeks, a reporter from The Minuteman has visited the loading dock for the Collegian and taken note of the number of newspapers that never made it off the loading dock or were immediately dumped in the paper recycling. We found no less than 1000 copies of the Collegian left on the loading dock each night -- and sometimes as many as 2000 copies.
In addition, we found that stacks of The Collegian were frequently left in dormitories, dining commons, and the campus center. The Minuteman estimates that as many as 2000 uncirculated copies of The Collegian are discarded from these various campus locations daily.
In all, The Minuteman estimates that on an average day, the circulation of the Collegian is 3000-4000 fewer than claimed, approximately 1/4 less than the 14,000-copy claim.
This is highly unethical for the reason that The Collegian charges its advertisers based on the expectation that 14,000 copies of each advertisement will circulate daily. As such, Collegian advertisers deserve to be notified that they are being overcharged for every advertisement they are placing in UMass’ mainstream newspaper.
It can be speculated that The Collegian is only inflating their circulation numbers to maintain their status as the largest daily college newspaper in New England. The Harvard Crimson claims a daily circulation of 12,500 copies and the UConn Daily Campus claims 10,000 copies/day. Assuming that the Harvard and UConn newspapers fully circulate their publications, The Minuteman asserts that The Collegian should abdicate its first place spot to The Harvard Crimson -- and perhaps should take a backseat to the UConn newspaper as well unless they can prove their dominance in the daily campus newspaper market in spite of our photographic evidence.
Additionally, The Collegian, as is widely known, is in a substantial amount of debt to the Student Government Association (SGA). It would make sense that a student group enduring such fiscal hardship would want to stem its wastefulness and return itself to fiduciary solvency as readily as possible and considering the tight fiscal climate facing UMass, it is a wonder that The Collegian is allowed to waste approximately a quarter of their printing budget a day chasing frivolous superlatives -- not to mention all those trees they could be saving.
John can be reached at
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