From April 8-9, members of The Cavalier Daily attended the Future of Student Media Summit at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. At the conference we attended panels and sessions led by industry professionals, former and current college paper editors (including our very own Matt Cameron!), and business managers from various student papers. The conference focused largely on business initiatives in the digital age, as well as ways to enhance our digital product.
At each session and discussion, we found inspiration for ways we can both offer new digital resources to our readers and monetize those resources. We learned how other papers have developed resource-based print papers and online pages that are entirely advertiser-generated, and how they have driven up revenue in an increasingly digital era. The conference also included literary workshops, with a special focus on incorporating design and graphics into literary work.
We left the conference with numerous ideas about how to offer more resources through our platform, improve our branding, and seek revenue outside the scope of traditional print and online advertisements. Based on our great experience, we hope we can send future staffs to this event as well!
By Dani Bernstein, Editor-in-Chief of The Cavalier Daily