Imagine The Gannett Miscellany News. Or perhaps The Rupert Murdoch Miscellany. Though almost too farfetched to fathom for Vassar’s student-run newspaper, Colorado State University’s (CSU) Rocky Mountain Collegian has spent the spring semester facing the issue of corporate ownership.

In early January, The Coloradoan, the area’s Gannett-owned daily newspaper, approached CSU’s president about a “strategic partnership,” in effect making an overture to take over operations of The Collegian. In turn, CSU’s president met with Coloradoan representatives, and asked for a proposal from the company, despite protests from The Collegian editors.

Justifiably, The Collegian is now concerned that it will soon lose its highly valued independence. The college newspaper industry, as opposed to the newspaper industry as a whole, is booming. Ad revenue is rising, as advertisers realize that their coveted targets, students aged 18-24, read their college newspapers with surprising regularity. In fact, according to a recent Collegian survey, an astounding 90 percent of CSU students read the daily Collegianat least once each week. This is opposed to a nationwide average of 28 percent of college students who read their local newspaper.

At the same time, as a recent New York Times article points out, many college journalists work for free, meaning that college newspapers essentially only have to pay for printing costs.

Therefore, with flourishing ad revenue and virtually no overhead, college newspapers represent a juicy target for profit-hungry corporations.

Financially, The Miscellany News is no different from many other college newspapers. We are funded through three sources: advertising, subscriptions and a Vassar Student Association (VSA) budget allocation. As a student organization, we enjoy the benefit of on-campus office space in the College Center, which outside publications would not be granted. In terms of ownership, The Miscellany News is a student organization, not a business or College-owned publication. The budget allocation from the VSA comes from the student activities fee that each student pays in order to matriculate at Vassar, making The Miscellany News beholden mainly to its readers, specifically the students.

But in every important sense, we are an independent newspaper. There is no professional advisor, we are not reviewed by the administration (either the student body’s or the College’s), and we alone are responsible for our content. While we receive ad revenue, it does not in any way dictate our news coverage. If faced with the prospect having to choose between running an ad and running an article, we will choose the article 10 times out of 10.

Section editors make decisions about newsworthiness and prominence of stories in layouts before they are informed of what ads will run in their section. This is a freedom we enjoy thanks to our editorial and financial independence. The Vassar Student Association Council is not overly concerned that it does not receive a sizeable return on its investment (although it would express interest if we began losing a great deal of money).

Unfortunately, all this would not be true if The Miscellany News were brought under the umbrella of a conglomerate, such as Gannett. Independence would be lost, as another organization would be concerned about our bottom line. Returning to the previous example, a national organization, expecting a certain return from its assets, would most likely favor running the ad, not the article, to the detriment of the entire college community.

Gannett, best known for owning USA Today, has already started moving into other student newsrooms. Despite insisting that it is not interested in buying up student newspapers, Gannett has already taken over Florida State University’s and University of Central Florida’s newspapers, both for-profit papers, and is apparently now interested in The Collegian.

Gannett’s interest in college newspapers is troubling, and in no way bodes well for the future of student journalism. No newspaper is free from financial pressures and a consideration of where its purse strings lead, but college papers should be free of the controversial for-profit model of the nation’s professional newspapers. Self-determination, particularly the ability to explicitly act against financial interests in favor of editorial interests, is what Gannett will be taking away from The Collegian if it acquires the newspaper.

—The staff editorial reflects the opinion of at least two-thirds of the 13-member editorial board.