Campus News Franchise Opportunities. Contact: Darren Johnson, Publisher, Campus News E-Mail: editor@campus-news.org Phone: 518-879-0965
Introduction to Campus News. I
n February 2010, the first issue of Campus News hit about a dozen two-year colleges in the New York Metro area.
At the time, the idea seemed counterintuitive. Print media was shrinking, the pundits said, especially among the younger demographic.
With our original graphic designer.
And while they were right about the younger demographic abandoning the newspapers of their parents’ generation, they were wrong about niche papers like Campus News, that are written by students, for students. So, as community college journalism departments, based on the punditry, started abandoning their print papers, Campus News kept growing. It now hits 37 campuses and prints over 100,000 issues a year. It’s easily the largest community college newspaper in the world! Campus News is now a 32-page, full-color, saddlestapled newspaper, printed using recycled paper and eco-friendly inks. The campuses embrace it. Student readers love it. Our student writers go on to prestigious four-year journalism programs and intern at top national publications.
Publisher Darren Johnson keeps the integrity of the product high while streamlining production, making it a safe and affordable place for advertisers to be.
Our student writers intern at places like Cosmo.
The publisher.
Founded for its advertisers. F
or several years, founder Darren Johnson was a part-time journalism instructor and newspaper advisor at a large community college. The paper was on the verge of collapse and Johnson rallied students and worked with advertisers to keep it going.
Advertisers are largely four-year colleges, looking for transfer students.
As he was about to depart for a college upstate, he asked the advertisers – colleges in the New York Metro area – what they thought of the idea of Campus News, a paper that hits multiple two-year college campuses. They thought it was a great idea, solving a common problem they had: gaining brand recognition among the growing population of potential transfer students. How else could these students consistently hear about transfer opportunities at four-year colleges? Thus, Campus News was born, serving three distinct purposes: It helps keep the student bodies on the
campuses informed; it helps keep student journalism vibrant at the twoyear college level; and it helps students meet their goals of graduation and then transfer to the institutions that advertise.
Colleges spend tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece, sending reps to transfer fairs, producing expensive direct mailings, buying e-mail lists, and buying ads in mediums that don’t directly hit their target. Here is a popular media product that hits the bullseye, and, because it uses newsprint and student writers, can do so affordably, passing the savings on to advertisers.
Campus News wouldn’t exist without the institutions that advertise, and we are very appreciative.
Why start a franchise? W
hy are we opening up Campus News to potential franchisees? We want to expand to new cities, and can’t do it any other way.
What skills do you need? You do not need any journalism ability whatsoever. What you will need to be is able to: Sell advertising. Don’t worry about the graphic design. We will handle that. But you will need to make phone calls to area businesses that would benefit by being in Campus News. Distribute the paper. You will need to get this paper out neatly and in a timely way to the readers. You will have to acquire racks (you may be able to find these cheap or free in your area and recycle, or they cost about $20 new apiece) and may have to let a facilities manager know about the paper at each college you deliver to (you do have a First Amendment right to distribute, but be a good citizen and keep racks clean and neat,
and don’t overstock them).
What is the business model? We do 10 issues each academic year from September through June, hitting approximately the first of each month. We’d expect you to: Have a relationship with your local printer. The print run would ideally be 10,000 each month.You would pick up the papers and get them out. You may hire a subcontractor for this. It costs us about $1400 to print and distribute each issue.You would pay the printing/distribution cost for your region. You would get 10 pages of advertising to sell. This would generate approximately $10,000 gross per issue. We find the Campus News brand relatively easy to sell. You would get exclusivity. With this agreement, you would have exclusivity for a radius of 150 miles.You’d have a student paper monopoly! Franchise fee is $2500/issue if you are doing all 10 issues. If you can’t do 10, the fee is higher.
With the most amazing college paper route ever. O
ur “secret recipe” these past seven years has been an amazing route that blitzes 37 community college campuses over three days each month. It’s a supply-chain miracle!
We hit campus cafeterias, student unions, academic buildings, performing arts centers – you name it. And we very carefully inventory our racks and changing student demographics at each campus to maintain an incredible pickup rate of 95 percent per campus.
If you live in a region with at least 8-10 community colleges, you can recreate our success. We will coordinate with your printer of choice for 10,000 of your local edition of Campus News to be ready to for you to
distribute.You don’t need a special truck. We break down deliveries over three days, using regular cars, with a basic handcart and some recycled racks.
College students still love print. W
e were very well received at the national Future of Student Media Summit in April at Ohio University,
We knew that students at the 37 community colleges we serve like us, but we found the hundreds of students there deeply interested in what we’re doing with our print product.
For the conference, Borrell Associates and the College Media Association commissioned an intensive study. The results: College students still love their printed newspapers and advertisers consider college newspapers crucial to their 2016-17 campaigns. The ads in print resonate!
Print ads are a classy way to tell a story. G
reat photography, exciting copy, modern design – the art of the color print ad is alive and well. And it’s a style of salesmanship that advertisers can’t replicate in other forms of media.
This college makes transfer easy
You’ve heard the expression, but have you ever applied it to yourself...or a situation you have been in? Think about it. How old are you – 18, 22, 22? As a young man or woman who reads Campus News, I can only assume you are a student attending a Tri-State area institution of higher learning. Whereever you go, that alone is a cause to celebrate that your glass is “half-full.� Why? Because whatever major you have chosen for yourself indicates to family and friends that you have a set path to achieve certain goals for yourself. Whether you attend John Jay College to enter police enforcement or Adelphi University to become a nurse, you are on the way! Think of your acquaintances from high school who were unfocused and/or confused. Although it is perfectly normal to have such feel-
ings as you enter adulthood, you still owe it to yourself (as the U.S. Army says) to “Be All That You Can Be.� Those of your friends who may have dropped out of high school before graduating, or who got caught up in alcohol or drug use, are being “Far Less Than They Should Be.� Another reason to smile in life and know your cup is “half-filled� is obvious to your professors who are over 40 years of age. You see, teaching for many years (in my case, 40!) provides an individual with life, business and personal experiences. Some are, of course, successful, but others can be deemed a miserable failure. But what YOU have going in your young lives is the gift of TIME. You can make a mistake...register for a wrong course, take a boring or mean-spirited professor in error, choose the wrong major, make the
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wrong career choice or fail in a business venture. But who cares? You have TIME to come back. Trust me on this one! As I see it, so many young people today (perhaps you?) lack the patience to wait. You want the latest high-tech gizmo YESTERDAY. You strive to drive a BMW or Lexus TODAY.
You max-out credit cards to buy clothes and “bling� to look good, but at what expense? Instant gratification does not and WILL NOT ever make your cup “half-full.� Believe me. I am not just blowing smoke in your direction. Life isn’t smoke and mirrors – it’s the real thing! Take the ride, enjoy the journey,
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My mother worked in a doctor’s office while I was growing up. When she would take me to work on my days off, I would sit in the waiting room flipping through the magazines. I was 11 or 12 at the time ‌ innocent and naĂŻve, looking at how beautiful the models were who showed off their toned bodies and perfectly applied makeup. I would read the magazines from the front cover all the way through the back; every caption, every word in the staff box. I would read the advertisements, the horoscopes and the quizzes. I loved magazines, all the different types. At 11, I wasn’t only reading Tiger Beat or J-14 – typical pre-teen magazines that featured the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and Destiny’s Child before there was only three members. I would read People Magazine, Glamour, Marie Claire, Vogue and of course, Cosmopolitan. For some reason I would always go back to that publication. I loved the provocative covers reading “SEXâ€? in big bold letters. I thought it was hysterical,
as a kid, but also loved how easy it was to read. I felt like I was talking to my best friend when I would read that magazine. Fast-forward five years and I was a junior in high school. I had an epiphany that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, which made sense considering my childhood love of reading and writing my own little stories in a journal. I don’t really know where that came from, exactly ‌ maybe I watched “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Daysâ€? or “13 Going on 30â€? too many times. Kate Hudson and Jennifer Garner portrayed these beautiful and hip young women who were journalists ‌ and not journalists who would write for a newspaper. They were magazine writers. They were glamorous. Since then, I went to Suffolk County Community College for three years after I graduated from high school in 2010. I studied journalism and com-
‘This credential leads to a well paying career.’
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Get MORE fr from om yyour our ccollege ollege experience. experience.
I’M INTERNING AT A TOP FOUR ACCOUNTING FIRM. sfc.edu From Money magazine, 2016 Time Inc. Used under license Money and Time Inc. DUH QRW DIÀOLDWHG ZLWK DQG GR QRW HQGRUVH SURGXFWV RU VHUYLFHV RI /LFHQVHH
Campus News | February 2016 | Page 16
A reader will surely see print ads in Campus News. Unlike with TV and fast-forwarding and the Internet with ad-blocking, newspaper readers do at least glance at every page.
And those truly interested in a Campus News ad can spend quality time with it. They can dogear it, mark it up or cut it out and save it for later.
MORE Choices Choices
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Internship placements for for every every student student Int ernship placements organizations 60+ cclubs lubs and organizations artt g galleries theatres on campus campus 2 ar alleries and 2 theatres Division III sports sports teams teams 1 5 NCAA Division 15
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Kelsey Papanicolaou ’17 B.S./M.S. in Accounting
munications there, ran the campus newspaper and wrote dozens of news stories for that monthly publication. I enjoyed it but I still knew that deep down I would love to be in the offices just like Anne Hathaway worked at in “The Devil Wears Prada� – without the angry boss in charge, of course. When I finally made my way to Stony Brook University in 2013, I began to concentrate in
99% of gr graduates are employed employed or in gr grad aduates are ad sschool chool w ithin 6 months within
FOUR EEASY ASY STEPS STEPS TO TRANSFER
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FIND Y YOUR OUR PROGRAM
VISIT CAMPUS
APPLY APPL Y ONLINE
TRANSFER YOUR YOUR CREDITS CREDITS
Learn MORE Learn 292-1730 ((518) 518) 29 2-1730 ttransfer@sage.edu ransfer@sage.edu sage.edu/transfer sa ge.edu/transfer
Advertisers can truly impress college students with this type of advertising. Campus News | February 2016 | Page 17
Quality institutions don’t advertise in tacky ways – a print ad is as classy as it gets.
With Campus News, advertisers will be in a well-printed publication exactly targeted to an important audience, next to vetted news. An advertiser can’t hit the target any better and more safely than this.
Our partnership. W
answered:
e want this partnership to succeed. Here are some frequenly asked questions,
What will be my total cost per issue?
If you follow our New York model, printing and distribution will be $1400 and the franchise fee is $2500 per issue. So approximately $3900/month over 10 months. Why am I limited to selling 10 pages of advertising?
Well, you can break down those pages any way you want; into halves, quarters, etc. Our model is that the typical page will fetch $1000 gross.
What if I can’t sell $10,000 in advertising? Anything you sell over $3900 is profit. We haven’t sold less than that number for our 10,000-print paper in our seven years of operation. Sometimes we go over $10,000 in gross sales per paper. Do you require payment up front?
We expect the first two months
($5000) to be paid in advance of the first issue, to demonstrate you’re serious and can handle this commitment. We can’t extend credit. Do I have to do all 10 issues?
Yes, that’s the commitment to advertisers we need to keep, as well as a 10,000 print run each month. We also have to ensure a high “pick up” rate; over 90% is ideal. What is the ideal route?
If you have 10 or more two-year colleges in your territory, great.You perhaps can move 800 copies at one and 1200 at the next, etc. You can distribute some extras to four-year
colleges, as well, but please keep the vast majority of distribution at community colleges, to start.
you a check. It’s easier if you do it. More details:
2016-2017 rate sheet: Needs to be created; we will help. Yes. We will replace our New circulation numbers/distribuYork content with content from your tion: Over 100,000 print, with aparea. We will find student writers proximately about 80 percent going local to your area and pay them.You directly to two-year colleges. may write a “from the publisher” run dates: The first of each piece, if you’d like. We will do all the month, September through June. layout and send the file to your deadlines: The 24th of each preprinter. You pick up and distribute. ceding month, except August and DeWho will be the advertisers? cember, where it’s the 20th. specs: 9.5”w x 11”h, color, PDF. Natural advertisers are four-year free bonuses for advertisers colleges. They want to attract stuwho commit to a full-page color dents from two-year colleges as ad in all 10 issues: Advanced PR transfers. You could also hit regional placement on Google News (Up to businesses that want to hit college 2/month), run of web site logo ads students, such as banks, restaurant chains, etc. We do not accept ads that (100k impressions), full-page editorial coverage up front in the paper, and promote sex, alcohol, tobacco and hyper- and video links in the digital similar products.You will call and edition (10k). schedule meetings with advertising buyers at each institution. After a Other things you can sell: while, it gets easier, as the advertisers will like Campus News and just keep social media: Boosting with our name can garner a new audience; we their ads going. can target to transfers, who know How is ad billing done? our product. We can also promote on YouTube. Cost is 30% of gross buy. If you open a business bank ac stickers: Add a 3” square sticker count, you can handle that yourself. to the front page. $1150/mo./gross. You should use a bank that gives you a credit card reader, as a lot of people How do I get started? pay that way now. If you need us to do the billing, we can oblige, but that Contact Darren Johnson at 518may add a few days for us to then cut 879-0965 or at editor@cccn.us. Will there be local content?