Editor’s note: Below find preliminary suggestions collected from The Daily Texan staff and readers to boost the Texan’s relevance and revenue. We encourage you to submit your own ideas before March 1 to [email protected] and tweet them to @thedailytexan. With permission, we will publish ideas we receive.
THE DAILY TEXAN ON YOUR SCREEN
• Redesign and relaunch The Daily Texan website using WordPress. This will make our site more nimble, flexible and usable to more editors and staff members at the Texan. WordPress has a built-in developers’ community to help, so we no longer will be reliant on an in-house expert.
• Build and launch a free Daily Texan mobile application. The free Daily Texan app will offer different guides to campus life and dining, access to reader-authored event listings and push Texan news alerts. It will allow mobile readers to engage with the stories they read, posting comments and responding to polls.
• Develop event listings where UT students can access and post information about meetings and events happening on and off campus.
• Develop a student-to-student classified ads section online, accessible only to UT students.
• Create a network of writers from groups all across campus. Host blogs by UT students and professors on The Daily Texan website.
THE DAILY TEXAN IN YOUR HAND
• Redesign the newspaper so it reflects fewer strictures of traditional newspaper layout and presents the most compelling image and headline visible from the box. This includes changing our traditional notion of what belongs on the front page. As part of the staffwide redesign effort, we will aim to develop compelling features that draw readers back and allow them to interact with the print product.
• Militantly scrutinize our distribution methods, evaluating the placement of each newspaper box on and off campus to increase efficiency and make it easier to get a paper.
• Hand out the paper at strategic locations such as Jester, Gregory Gymnasium and the West Mall.
THE DAILY TEXAN’S BOTTOM LINE
• Conduct an in-depth study of The Daily Texan readers to determine who they are and what they’re looking for when they open a paper or browse our website.
• Use the business school as a resource. The Daily Texan’s current problems offer a real-world learning experience not only for us, but also for enterprising business students.
• Develop new print products to engage readers and provide more opportunities for advertising revenue, such as a Back-to-Campus guide, a Greek Life guide, a Best-Of guide.
• Publish Daily Texan photographs on wall-sized posters which include advertisements, distribute to freshmen looking to decorate spare dorm room walls. Sell artfully-designed graduation posters drawn and customized by The Daily Texan comics department.
• Host Daily Texan-sponsored debates and events and charge admission. Film these events and post the video footage on our website.
