The Daily Eastern News is changing its printing schedule from daily to weekly starting in the 2022 spring semester.

Due to multiple changes within the journalism department, The Daily Eastern News will not be printing Monday through Friday as The News has done for nearly 50 years.

According to The News staff several factors contributed to this change; Eastern’s reduced enrollment has led to less money in fees for Student Publications, a decline in enrollment of journalism students at Eastern has led to a smaller staff, students are more likely to read news media through social media and the internet to receive news and the news media industry has changed to focus on digital media platforms. 

Joe Gisondi, professor of journalism and adviser to The News, said when he came to Eastern originally, the daily print publication was appealing to him.

“One of the reasons I came here in 2002 to advise the DEN because of its daily press, and putting out a daily publication every single day,” Gisondi said.

Gisondi said The News doesn’t have the funding to print daily anymore.

“When I first got here, I think we were bringing in $300,000 or more in advertising,” Gisondi said. “And now we had two advertisers, so we can’t get an advertiser, and we can’t get funding so sadly, unfortunately, we’re not gonna be able to do this.”

“It breaks my heart that this is happening. At the same time, you need to pivot to what’s best for students to train them,” Gisondi said.

The News will continue to publish daily Monday through Friday on its website dailyeasternnews.com, but will only be printing weekly.

The weekly printed edition will be distributed on campus Wednesday afternoon every week classes are in session.

The new printing schedule will be eight to 12 pages once a week with full color on the first and last page along with the two middle pages.

There will only be a total of 15 papers printed for the 2022 spring semester compared to what would have been 73 papers if The News continued to print Monday through Friday.

Corryn Brock, editor-in-chief of The News and senior journalism major, said she was sad to see the change but excited for the opportunities that will come from it.

“I am very sad to see such a major part of The Daily Eastern News’ identity come to an end,” she said. “I think that it’s sad that we can’t [print] here anymore, but it also is just reflective of how journalism is in the ‘real world.’ So I think that while it is sad, it’s a part of the process that news as a whole is going through.”

“The Daily Eastern News has been a part of Eastern’s campus for over 100 years,” Brock said. “Going from a paper meant to cover sports to printing multiple times a week, then to daily and getting our own press. And now here at the end, we’re one of a very, very few college papers that prints in the same location of the papers being created. This is another part of a very long legacy at The News.”

Any questions regarding the changes to The News, contact 581-2812 or deneic@gmail.com.

Madelyn Kidd can be reached at  581-2812 or at mekidd@gmail.com.