When the Student Newspaper Is the Only Daily Paper in Town

Unlike many college newspapers, The Daily has the financial support — in the form of a $4.5 million endowment — to sustain its breadth of reporting, said Neil Chase, the chairman of the university’s student publications board.

Metropolitan daily newspapers, most of which have suffered through annual cuts to their news pages and editorial staffs, would quite likely envy The Daily’s rare financial position, said Mr. Chase, who was its editor in chief in the 1980s and is the former executive editor of The Mercury News in San Jose, Calif., and The East Bay Times in Northern California.

“In a city of 100,000 people, you have to decide if you’re going to cover a City Council meeting, a car crash, or some other local news because you only have a few people to go around,” he said. But The Daily “has so many people, they don’t have to make those tough decisions.”

During the academic year its print edition, with a circulation of about 7,500, is dropped off five days a week at more than 100 locations on and off campus, said Tommy Dye, 20, the paper’s business manager. Print costs are mostly covered by advertising revenue, helped in large part by special sections, such as an annual issue that includes the baby photos of graduating seniors and brings in up to $45,000, he said.

Still, as reader habits have shifted, the newsroom has embraced a more digital future. Its website fetches nearly 500,000 page views every month and the staff has created four podcasts, including a weekly news podcast that includes coverage of city issues.