While on-campus dining establishments continue to provide morning editions of local, regional and national newspapers, the dailies students may take for granted are under constant anxiety due to shifting trends in news media.
As advertisement revenues plummet and more readers turn to the Internet to get their news, publications like the Providence Journal are feeling the effects.
And though the death of the newspaper industry has been widely reported for many years, newspaper companies' challenges and concerns have escalated in recent months.
On the heels of a series of layoffs last year, the ProJo may soon face a fresh round of workforce reductions, according to a statement released last month by Robert Decherd, president and chief executive officer of A.H. Belo Corporation, which owns the newspaper.
Last July, Belo announced a plan to cut the corporation's workforce by nearly 14 percent, eliminating 500 full-time jobs from the company's various holdings, according to a Jul. 28 article in the ProJo. Belo also owns the Dallas Morning News.
Last summer's announcement came after months of revenue losses. In 2008 alone, Belo's second-quarter revenue fell 15.1 percent, and in the three months leading up to the layoff announcement, the company reported a net loss of $3.19 million. During the same period in 2007, the company netted a profit of $12.9 million.
Maribel Correa, director of investor relations for Belo, declined to comment on how many positions were eliminated at the ProJo last year.
The Providence Newspaper Guild - representing 400 employees of the ProJo and 200 at the Worcester Telegram and Gazette - reported on its Web site that 22 ProJo employees accepted buyouts in September 2008. The following month, an additional 31 employees were laid off.
October's layoffs eliminated the entire part-time workforce of the paper's news department.
Correa said that while the cutbacks in 2008 included voluntary severance packages, or buyouts - providing "certain benefits," different from those provided if an employee was let go - the impending layoffs would not include buyouts.
Correa declined to specify how many employees would be let go at the ProJo in the coming months.
In his January letter to employees, Decherd announced that a second round of layoffs would "probably be in the range" of an additional 500 jobs corporation-wide.
Specifics about the reduction will be released no later than mid-February, he wrote.
Decherd also presented other initiatives aimed at improving Belo's finances in the letter, including suspending the company's 401(k) savings matching program and eliminating many reimbursement policies for expenses such as telephone costs and monthly parking fees.
And while the loss of benefits has many concerned, John Hill, a ProJo reporter and president of the newspaper guild, said employees have "bigger worries" - namely, the specific scale and severity of the upcoming staff reductions.
"The cuts are getting to the point that we're worried how the paper is going to be able to maintain itself," Hill said, adding that decisions about the ProJo's future are "being made by people half a continent away."
"They don't understand the role the Journal plays in the fabric of Rhode Island," he said, "and that's on the verge of
being lost."
This is not the first time that Hill and the newspaper guild have expressed concern about Belo's management. In a referendum published on its Web site last month, the guild encouraged Decherd to "forgo his recent 140 (percent) raise and return his base salary to its 2008 level of a quarter million dollars a year."
"If people are being laid off, and people are being asked to give up their jobs, it would be nice for him to lead by example," Hill said.
But Hill understands that the problems at the ProJo are only part of a larger, national issue.
"We're not alone," he said, adding that "the business is going to be very different" from now on.
A March 2008 report by the Pew Research Center reported that the Web sites of local, regional, national and even international newspapers are falling behind other Internet sectors as they search for a revenue model different from print advertising.
The Internet has surpassed "all other media" except television as an outlet for national and international news, with 40 percent of Americans and nearly 60 percent of Americans under 30 reporting that they get most of their national and international news online, according to a statement released by Pew last December.
