The Eagle is in trouble, and we need your help.
On Jan. 23, The Eagle announced that we might be going digital-only after this semester. We now realize that this doesn’t have to happen. If the AU community wants our only newspaper to continue, it can.
But it will not be easy. The Eagle needs AU’s support.
To guarantee a shot at having a print issue in the future, The Eagle must join the Student Media Board. Our goal is diversifying our revenue so we’ll no longer be dependent on the advertising market.
However, this comes with concerns. In joining the Media Board, we may not have access to all of the finances we need, since the Media Board only has a certain amount of money to go around. With The Eagle joining, there will be even less funding per organization.
Joining the Media Board could possibly sacrifice our complete editorial independence. The only way to ensure editorial independence is to have business independence.
Despite this, The Eagle cannot sustain itself if it goes digital-only next semester. The transition period would be too quick to maintain our readership and ad sales. We would make even less than we do now, since most of our revenue comes from print ad sales.
We’re not fighting for a print edition for the sake of nostalgia. We’re fighting to survive.
AU needs The Eagle. Where else would you get your breaking campus news? Where would you widely voice your opinion if you couldn’t write op-eds?
The print edition gives students and faculty a sense of community. Each week, at least 3,000 issues of The Eagle are taken off the stands.
Without a print issue on campus, many students will choose other schools over AU. The School of Communication hosts one of the best journalism programs in the country: we would not attract the journalists we do without print.
The Eagle’s print edition is the best advertisement we have. If it were to disappear without first building up a more robust online presence, The Eagle would be relegated to the role of a blog, with few readers and fewer resources.
AU students need The Eagle, and now, we need you.
As staff writers on The Eagle, we are going to work to save the print edition. Until there is no chance of printing next semester, we are going to keep fighting for this paper.
Here is what you can do:
• Join us. Send your story to tips@theeagleonline.com. Be our eyes and ears on campus.
• Use the twitter hashtag #SaveTheEagle whenever you tweet about an article or this issue, and use it a lot.
• Write a letter to the editor about why we need a print issue of The Eagle.
• Donate directly to The Eagle Newspaper Fund.
Take a stand, because AU should not be ready to say goodbye to journalism.
edpage@theeagleonline.com
