Advertisers Go Back to School with High School Newspapers
Posted by anastasia on 07-28-2004According to this press release J&S Printing, which handles the printing for over 1500 high school newspapers will team up with Campus Media Group to "deliver rare access for national advertisers to reach the high school market." What happened to students selling ads to the local coffee shop or mechanic? I thought learning that role was a part of the whole high school newspaper experience. At least it was when I edited my college newspaper. Marketers have been champing at the bit to get more access to students in schools. There's something a bit Orwellian about students being forced to watch ads on Channel One or having to flip through a full page advertising spread from a big national advertiser to get to the recap of that week's home football game.
June 9th, 2005 at 8:41 am
I actually created this progrom when I worked at J&S. In answer to the negativity, I agree. Students should learn the whole process of selling ads to local shops. I also created materials that taught exactly that, and posted on the website for any school to download and use. I also taught that information in classes at national and regional journalism conventions. The purpose of this program was to provide more knowledge of working with an agency type placement, getting more money to fund the paper (an increasingly difficult task), and allowing the classes to focus on producing the paper, not running up and down the strip malls.
We/I spent a lot of hours awake at night coming up with ideas to help the kids for whom we ultimately were working. It's a little depressing to know that someone will always find a way to make a snarky comment about your hard work after giving it 1/2 second of thought.
June 9th, 2005 at 9:25 am
Thanks for your comment Steve. I'm sorry you read my post as negative and "snarky." The article I read at the time was positioned towards marketers trying to get more access to a very captive audience. Thanks for giving me the full story.