In an apparently earnest attempt to reconnect with an increasingly disinterested student body, declining student paper Daily Nebraskan un-ironically printed a series of stories about sustainability, the latest thing students maybe sort of care about.
Despite having reduced its printing schedule from five times a week to twice weekly, the DN and its editors saw absolutely nothing wrong with printing a story about how the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is a long way from being ecologically sustainable.
“Sustainability has been a real hot-button issue, both here on campus, and at the Daily Nebraskan,” said Hailey Konnath, editor of the DN, a paper that has been hemorrhaging readership long before she became a UNL student.
If UNL and the DN are to remain relevant in the Big 10 environment, said DN General Manager Dan Shattil, they are going to have to make sustainability a top priority.
“Sustainability efforts have included and increased effort to recycle on game day, and reducing the size of paper the DN is printed on, which lowers the DN’s harm to the environment and its shrinking source of funding,” Shattil said.
If UNL does not redouble its efforts to make campus sustainable it could end up in the same position as the DN, said Brittney Thiele, a junior environmental studies major and member of the ASUN Environmental Sustainability Committee.
“Between the amount of food wasted at the dining halls, and the misguided, often hurtful opinion pieces the DN has printed, it’s a wonder how either has lasted this long in the first place,” Thiele said.
An employee of the DN, who preferred not to be named as he will not take up his new position until next semester, admitted there have been some cutbacks at the DN, and that it may have had something to do with the DN’s past unsustainable business model.
“I am among the first class of UNL students to have seen the Daily Nebraskan decline every semester since freshmen year,” the anonymous DN employee said.
“That might have something to do with printing more stories than most students cared to read, and more often than they cared to read them.”