Three years since the Revolution: What’s next for the Emerald?
By Kayla Robertson
J494: Critical Thinking about Design and Disruption
University of Montana School of Journalism
May 23, 2015 will mark the third anniversary of when the Emerald moved from a traditional campus newspaper to a front-runner for the changing face of college journalism. The Emerald transformed into a media empire in order to not only adapt but to thrive at a time when consumption habits for college news change daily. Three years later, what’s different?
FROM A COLLEGE DAILY INTO A MEDIA COMPANY: THE REVOLUTION BEGINS
In 2012, a publisher and two editors, incoming and outgoing, sat around a conference room table and planned a revolution.
For 116 years, The Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Company, Inc., produced a daily paper covering events around the University of Oregon, but the team of leaders decided to change that. The Emerald was about to be transformed into a front-runner in the college media industry. Up until 2012, it printed Monday through Friday, covering breaking news and features, with a standard online website.
In 2012, The Revolution began. The daily publication of the paper didn’t end — it moved online. The most notable shift the Emerald made was to a bi-weekly news magazine, broken into two parts printed Monday and Thursday. Both were modeled after other alternative weeklies like the Willamette Week in Portland and The Stranger in Seattle. The Emerald Monday was focused on news, weekend sports coverage, and a cover story about a major campus issue, along with news briefs. Then-publisher Ryan Frank said: “While our online coverage focuses on the ‘what happened,’ our print edition focuses on the ‘how and why.’ He said they modeled the Monday after Newsweek, Bloomberg Businessweek and ESPN Magazine.
The Emerald Wknd, published on Thursdays, has a focus on entertainment and culture with a feature cover story. It also includes event calendars for the upcoming weekend, campus-relevant feature stories about events, technology, entertainment, music and sex. Frank said the weekend edition was modeled after Rolling Stone, Wired and Vanity Fair. The Emerald boasts it adapted to provide the most relevant news to readers by trimming filler news that was previously in the daily paper and replacing it with in-depth reporting the audience will value more.
Frank told PBS’s MediaShift: “We’re about to close the book on the Oregon Daily Emerald. After 92 years, the University of Oregon’s newspaper will end its run as a Monday-to-Friday operation in June. Yes, it’s the end of an era, and we’re sad about that. But it’s also the start of a new era, the digital one.”
The transformation wasn’t just to a bi-weekly print edition, but into a media company with seemingly endless possibilities. On the digital side, The Emerald switched to offer breaking news, multimedia galleries and a stronger mobile and social media presence. The print edition holds more longform, relevant stories students want to read in print. Aside from the digital shift and expanded print edition, the media group holds events and promotions, under the name Emerald Presents. These parties, sponsorships and festivals bring in revenue as well as increase audience. The advertising and marketing division is a completely separate team, which leave the newsroom to focus on content.
THE MEDIA COMPANY, 3 YEARS LATER. WHAT WORKED?
Three years later, the media group has an audience of over 200,000, but the Emerald staff is still ironing out the details of their media empire.
The Emerald’s website boasts their mission, which is to “train students, serve the UO community and run a financially sustainable nonprofit business.” Sami Edge, the Emerald’s current Editor-in-chief, says the current mission since the redesign is to “make college better.”
“The first year of the Revolution was truly that — an overhaul. Since, we’ve embraced the spirit of ‘revolution’ as a continuing thing — like the revolutions of a wheel, we’re constantly evolving with the changing media landscape, staying fluid and adapting as we spin into the future,” Edge said.
Although the Emerald staff is still evolving, they’ve learned many lessons already from the three years since the big change.
Edge said the shift has sharpened breaking news skills of the whole staff, and the digital-first mindset forces each story to be held to a higher standard than before.
“We’ve become incredibly skilled at breaking news quickly. Our staff members are adept at publishing information the minute it is verified in a short post, tweeting a link to that post, adding a photo, getting it on Facebook, then adding more information into the post and polishing the story as the event develops. Breaking news is a team effort for us, and we pride ourselves on doing it more quickly than our professional competition. We printed new t-shirts that read: ‘News breaks. We fix it,’ ” Edge said.
The shift to digital was crucial to expanding the Emerald’s breaking news skills, and since the Revolution, the online presence has only grown, and now the Emerald thrives on many platforms.
THE EMERALD THRIVES OUTSIDE OF PRINT
Although the daily paper moved online, there isn’t a single focus that is the Emerald. It a combination of two papers a week, an online digital daily, an extensive social media presence, a PR firm, a sales department, an events team and many other publications and blogs. While the news focus lies on the bi-weekly paper and online daily, the Emerald Media group is successful because of the work of all franchises. They are all essential for not only branding and audience outreach purposes, but for profit and sustainability well.
The website: The website is broken up into cover stories, news, Gameday, Wknd, opinion, multimedia, special, InstaO, E1, and Quackd. While most news organizations have similar sections, some of these are unique to the Emerald. The Emerald often publishes special editions about things like Law School, DuckLife Law School. Its multimedia section includes not only photos and videos, but regular podcasts. The InstaO shows a feed of nearby university-related Instagram posts from students around the community, but is not monitored by Emerald staff. The Emerald describes the E1 section as, “If there was a front page of the internet, this would be it.” It’s where most big long-form cover stories stay online. Another section, Quackd, is a blog that features contributed essays. As the website says, “Quackd is their platform to tell the stories that make us laugh, cry and everything in between.”
Apps: The Emerald apps cater to those who want to dive into a certain section of the Emerald. There’s the Duck GameDay app and the Emerald news, wknd and sports.
Social Media: The Emerald also has a strong social media presence. On Facebook, the Emerald posts both daily news and features from the news magazine for its audience of 6,185 fans. Aside from stories, the Facebook page also features photos from events like sports games. The posts are frequent. There is also a visual element for every post. The Twitter accounts are similar, at the @dailyemerald, with 11.4K followers, and @odesports, with 3,251 . The Instagram, @dailyemerald with 1,664 followers, mostly posts pictures of cover stories, with the occasional campus interest photo, mostly daily. Vine isn’t a huge part of the Emerald’s social media presence.
Other prospects: The Emerald doesn’t just print a newspaper. The media group has produced Taking Flight, a hardcover photo book of the University of Oregon’s football history, which sells for $39.95. It also has two magazines, Duck Life, about student orientation, and Duck Season, a college football preview. The Emerald Photobooth is also a big revenue source for the media group. Emerald staff brings cameras, lights and props to campus events, to record images of guests for a fee. “Impress your guests with red-carpet-worthy professional quality photos and real time photo strip printing. Run by students at University of Oregon, PhotoBooth takes your event’s energy to the next level,” the website boasts. The Emerald also hosts political debates, parties, promotions, football watch parties and student music festivals.
The Venture Department is another revenue source for the Emerald. Separate from the paper but still part of Emerald Media Group, Venture is a marketing group to help businesses around the University of Oregon, while the profit made goes back to the whole media group.
FOR THE EMERALD, THE CHANGES NEVER STOP
Although there will be a mostly entirely new Emerald staff in a few short years, the vision of the ever-changing Emerald remains static.
Edge said record keeping is crucial to keeping consistency and passing along newsroom knowledge.
“As an organization we’ve come to understand the importance of keeping a library of institutional knowledge. Students move in and out of the newsroom quickly — even if they stay all four years — so keeping record of lessons we’ve learned, conversations we’ve had and things we’ve tried is the best way to help future generations of The Emerald build on our success instead of repeating our mistakes.”
“As an editor, I’ve learned not to assume anything. When I’m having personnel issues I make an effort to understand the life situation of the coworker before disciplining them for actions, and I’ve learned to make sure that when I’m talking with reporters and editors I don’t assume that they have the same knowledge of news principles and practices that I do. There’s no shame in not knowing something — we all have to learn sometime — but not clarifying expectations and procedures often leads to miscommunications and mistakes.”
Edge said the Emerald will most likely keep a print edition around for a while.
“There’s something special about a tangible print product. Holding a piece of writing in your hands somehow makes it more attention grabbing and more important. I think there will always be a demand for that physicality,” she said. Although it’s difficult to predict the next step in publishing platforms for college journalism, Edge is confident The Emerald will survive no matter what digital platform arises in the future of media.
WHAT’S NEXT?
“Five years from now I still see The Emerald as a leader in college media. What will that look like? I have no clue. But I’m certain that the principles of innovation, entrepreneurship and daring that we foster in every aspect of our business and editorial dealings will allow us to keep ‘revolving’ fluidly and seamlessly,” Edge said.
“Every May we release a new innovation, and this year that will be a team that we call ‘Emerald Extras.’ To stay relevant in the modern media landscape, newspapers need to do a better job of marketing themselves.
“Edge said, “Emerald Extras is a newsroom-based promotion agency aimed at filling that gap. Starting next fall, the group of former reporters focused on newsroom promotion will host a series of events with campus groups, simultaneously connecting students with resources they might be interested in and raising awareness for our presence on campus. Because these students used to work in the newsroom, they’re also able to describe our newsroom procedures and help students understand the role, intention and boundaries of journalism — principles that often confuse our audience, especially as the digital media landscape continues to evolve.”
FOR THE EMRALD, MONEY’S NO (BIG) ISSUE
The Emerald has proved to be extremely successful for a college newspaper, much more in recent years. It has staffed many notable writers, editors and photographers who have gone on to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Google and Facebook.
An important part of the Emerald’s redesign to consider is its resources. The Emerald has a managing board which consists of alums and business managers who essentially make some big decisions. This lets the staff break into sections easier, from print to online to separate marketing ventures. Also, The Emerald didn’t make the dramatic shift due to financial implications. While some cost-cutting went into the Revolution, the Emerald mostly remained out of debt and with a reserve fund, which many college newspapers can’t say. The Emerald didn’t simply cut or add staff, it reinvisioned the newsroom to create a structure that changed as they went.
Another factor in the Emerald’s successful revolution was its other ventures, like marketing and public relation groups, that fund the entire media group, including the expensive print edition.
This report was produced for the final thesis in “J494: Critical Thinking About Design and Disruption,” the Spring 2015 Pollner Seminar at the University of Montana. To review the rest of the reports from our class, link here. To review our syllabus for the course, link here.
Contact the author: kayla.robertson3@gmail.com. Website. LinkedIn. Twitter.
