• by Larry Dobrow , March 29, 2004

High school newspapers arrive with varying frequency. Their reach is often limited to the school's borders. In terms of print quality, they elicit few flattering comparisons, even to local shopping circulars.

So maybe Monday's news that Campus Media Group (CMG) is hawking full-page ads in the 1,500 papers printed by J&S Printing should be regarded as yet another sign of the desperation among national marketers to reach young consumers-to-be wherever they can. CMG, a youth-marketing and media firm, believes the arrangement will provide needed funds for school journalism programs--and give the papers a considerably more professional look and feel.

Given the aforementioned frequency and print-quality concerns, the notion of national advertisers lining up to patronize student newspapers seems far-fetched. Yet CMG president Tom Borgerding believes that the real issue would-be advertisers have traditionally had with school papers is one of communication. "They're generally run as a project by a teacher on staff," he explains. "Getting approvals and coordinating schedules and deadlines made it almost impossible for anyone beyond local advertisers to be involved."

CMG's solution? Eliminating all communication with school officials and de facto publishers/teachers, and essentially becoming the sales arm of J&S Printing. High schools will send all materials to J&S digitally, at which point the printer will lay in the ads to ensure proper sizing and placement. "We can control the print quality--that's the most important thing," Borgerding says.

As for the quest to add national advertisers, the announcement that AT&T Wireless Services has signed on as the program's first client should temporarily silence the naysayers. Indeed, Borgerding doesn't believe that CMG will have to assuage would-be advertisers' fears about anything besides frequency.

"Once they know that these papers will arrive on a regular basis, they're fine with the idea," he says, adding that they don't need to be sold on the editorial environment--grainy photos or not. "Students, especially at that age, want to read about what's going on with their friends. That's exactly what advertisers trying to reach younger people are looking for." Left unsaid is the fact that school newspapers are largely an untapped market, and that teenagers have more discretionary income today than ever before.

CMG has already approached a host of the usual suspects (movie studios, the Xbox/PlayStation/Nintendo trio) and a few unusual ones (insurance companies, automotive companies). Universities hoping to recruit students have shown interest, as have food and beverage companies. To its credit, the company is cognizant of the issues of the moment--childhood obesity, indecency in popular entertainment--and has limited its sales calls accordingly.

"We're trying to be realistic," Borgerding acknowledges. "There are issues about content, and there's the knowledge that for some of these schools, the papers won't ever be much more than kind of a pet project. But if we can get students accustomed to look in the newspapers for a coupon they can use for lunch, that's going to get a lot of people interested."

For now, CMG is selling only full-page ads (mostly back pages) for around $300 per. Should the program prove successful, half- and quarter-page units as well as inserts are likely to be added in the months ahead.