Student leaders exploring Washington Post offer for free newspaper program
Posted by: Lillian Kaiser in News, Vox Populi, tags: Free Newspapers, Georgetown, GUSA, Interhall, The Corp, Washington Post
After the demise of the free newspaper program early this year, student leaders have been pushing to bring the Washington Post back to campus, according to Will Cousino (SFS ‘12) of Interhall. Cousino, GUSA Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11) and Corp CFO Phil Goodman (SFS ‘10), are still deciding between a new offer from the Washington Post, and older offers from USA Today’s Collegiate Readership program and the New York Times.
The details of the Washington Post deal may change, according to Cousino, but as of earlier this week the Post was willing to provide 200 papers a day for a cost of $1200.
As Cousino said, it’s “pretty much the same offer as the Times. Difference being that the Washington Post can also deliver the New York Times (albeit at a high cost… more than $1 a copy).”
According to Kluger, the number of copies of the Post the Times that this deal would include has not yet been nailed down.
In addition to which papers to include, Kluger emphasized that distribution methods are a critical factor in the decision. The Post delivers their own papers, whereas USA Today hires a Georgetown student to put out the papers every morning.
“Also, there’s the question of physically what to put the papers in,” Kluger said. “The [containers] we had before, [which] you had to use your GOCard to get into, were part of the Collegiate Readership program. We have to see if we can still use them.”
The next step for the free newspaper movement is narrowing the three offers down to one, definitive deal. Kluger is eager to incorporate student input in the ultimate decision.
“Whatever our final choice comes down to, unless student feedback comes down really hard on one side or the other, we have a survey set up to get out in an email to the student body,” Kluger said.
The e-mail will be sent as soon as Cousino, Kluger, and Goodman narrow down their options, a process which could still take a few weeks.
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Ohh GUSA. Give up the newspaper program and also spending ridiculous amounts of money on things we don’t “need”–that stuff can come later. Let’s focus on the things that matter, like getting internet in Walsh. We’re a major research university, this shit is unacceptable.
I really think the USA Today sucks, please don’t choose that.