Daily Egyptian

I was wondering why the DE continued to put out a print edition since, since according to my admittedly unsystematic research, very few if any students read the print paper, instead choosing to peruse it online. The savings would seem to justify closing th eprint operation of the paper but it appears, according to a student reporter I spoke with, if the DE wishes to remain an accredited publication, it must have a print edition as well as an online one

Haunted Carbondale Hundley House

One of the local papers, in this case the Daily Egyptian, makes its annual trek to Hundley House with a look at the 1928 murder and attendant haunting. Remember that Trick or Treating in Carbondale is from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. tonight.

DE and Chancellor's Plan

Apparently new Chancellor Carlo Montemagno got a bit annoyed with the DE for relegating his speech on his vision for the university to page 15 of  the Sept 27 issue. At any rate the reorganization plan made it to the front page of the Oct 4 issue so I would guess word got back to the DE editorial staff.

DE Weekly

According to my ad rep for the SIUC Daily Egyptian, starting this semester, the paper, which published online only over the summer, will move to a once a week print publishing schedule. New issues will appear once a week on Wednesday. She also indicated they were wooing bars and liquor stores, which abandoned the DE en masse a decade ago after a few stories the paper ran on bar overcrowding. Prior to that, bars were among the largest DE advertisers but over the years that money has moved to Thomas Publishing and the Carbondale Nightlife.

Daily Egyptian Ceasing to Do Its Own Printing

After almost half a century, SIUC's Daily Egyptian will stop doing its own printing on an in-house press and will outsource  print runs to another company. A combination of economies of scale and a drop off in advertising combined to make this happen. It is just not cost effective for a student run news paper to do its own printing on its own presses, since it has little other printing to do on them. The Southern and Thomas Publishing have other print jobs to run, aside from the paper, thus allowing them to spead the cost of the presses across a larger number of print jobs. The DE doesn't have that.

The Daily Egyptian also suffers from a drop in advertising. Looking through the pages of the latest edition shows a paucity of ads that one would expect to find in a student targeted paper.  The local movie theaters pulled their advertising years ago, even telling the paper that it ought to run their showtimes as a public service.

More detrimental is the lack of advertising from the local bars. Years ago, the DE was filled with ads promoting the local drinking establishments and the bands or other entertainment. The closest today's paper has is one ad from Blue Sky Vineyards and one from the Egyptian Hookah Cafe.

It is not that the local bars are not advertising. The Carbondale Nightlife is full of ads for them. They just aren't advertising in the DE.

DE Could Shutter

The board of Trustees tabled until next year a proposed student fee increase of $9 per student, designed to help cover deficits at the Daily Egyptian, which otherwise, according to its current editor  may have to shut down after this semester.

The increase in online media has hit the Daily Egyptian particularly hard.  Campus readership has dropped from 97-99% daily readership among faculty, students and staff in the 1990s to about 99% of students and 75% of faculty and staff reading the paper once per week.

An additional problem for the DE is the bars and liquor stores, major advertisers in the DE in past years, have almost no advertising in current issues. In the past, the DE has run stories on liquor license violations at various bars and, from what i understand, saw a drop off in adversing by said bars in response. The DE has not run any such stories in recent years but the b ar and liquor store advertising has not come back to the level that it reached in past years.

Jane Adams and the DE on Polar Bear

Councilwoman Adams spend much of Saturday night crusing with the Carbondale PD around downtown Carbondale the night of Polar Bear and has posted a report to her blog.  The DE has photo coverage here.  It appears a surprisingly quiet night for the police department, at least based on news posted on their website and from Adams comments.  Strangely, I found no coverage in the Southern Illinoisan about the event, save for descriptions of city preparations for the event.

On the agenda at City Council tonight is a proposal to reduce the number of  available class B liquor licenses from 16 to 15, which are all currently held by operating bars and restaurants.  If the license cap is reduced, anyone wishing to open a bar in town would not only have to get a liquor license but would first have to petition the city council to raise the liquor license cap in order to make another license available, putting another hurdle in the way of someone wishing to start a business in C'dale.  There is also the question of whether we want to encourage the opening of more bars within the community.

National Guard Armory

The DE has some more information on the sale of the Armory, including that there is no asking price, rather the Guard is taking sealed bids on the building.  No indication if there is a minimum bid or not.  A couple of city officials expressed an interest in buying it, but really, what would the city do with it?  We have a perfectly serviceable civic center, with no problems with overcrowding, at least that I know of.  The city actually got rid of a city building (the Eurma Haynes center) earlier this year, so to spend city funds on another one, without a plan in place, makes little sense.

New Restaurants

Yesterday's DE has an article looking at several of the restaurants that opened in downtown Carbondale recently.  Most attention paid to Kelly's Irish Boxty House and Blend Tea and Crepe, with mention made of Cristaudo's, Mo Wallace BBQ and Evelyn's.  Downtown Carbondale, according to the article, now boasts over 40 restaurants, more than it looks at first glance.  By the way, the Premier Lounge, north side of the square has a soft opening this weekend.

Business comments on strike

The DE called around this week asking local business about the potential effect of a strike on local businesses.  The consensus appears that, while the labor strife isn't hurting business currently, an actual strike would certainly harm the university and, by extension, the local economy.

The Southern on Kirkwood

As a reader pointed out, the Southern has been silent on any of the current goings on regarding the raid of Kevin Kirkwood's home for a purported recording of a conversation between he and Brad Cole.  The last mention I found regarding Kirkwood and the Icebox was this story dated mid-May

WDBX Follow-up

The DE has a follow up to the reaction to the addition of Democracy Now to the WDBX lineup

The DE and Downtown

The DE has laid the smack down on downtown Carbondale over the last week with a front page article featuring negative student comments about Carbondale in general and downtown in particular, followed by an editorial calling for more focus on student needs in the city's comprehensive plan. Today's issue has a story focusing on the closing of Melange, without mentioning that owner Mark Garwin announced Sunday, three days before the story ran, that the restaurant will remain open with limited hours for the foreseeable future. I see other stories from today's paper have made it to the DE's website but not that one.

I did want to address a couple of points the DE makes. First, the city doesn't have a lot of say in what business do or do not come to town. The business looks at the economic base and how strong the economy appears, then decides whether or not to locate there. Local government may offer tax incentives in order to entice the business to come in, as C'dale did some years ago with Old Navy, but in general, the city usually winds up giving more to the incoming business than it recoups in jobs and taxes. The city has not made any additional tax rebate offers and, according to city manager Alan Gill, has zero plans of doing so in the future.

The second point is the call for university input into the direction the comprehensive plan, and by implication the city, takes. A committee of local citizens, including at least one representative from SIUC staff, spent over a year discussing and shaping the comprehensive plan. I sat in on a number of meetings and, while the SIUC representative attended 90% of the meetings I did, I never saw a single student show up. If you want the community to reflect your wishes and needs, you need to show up to have a voice in it.

The third point is that students vote with their dollars what businesses they want in downtown. They have chosen, over the past 20 years to transfer their business to the mall, Wal-mart and the businesses on the east side, and to a lesser extent west side, of town. The bars and restaurants currently in downtown are the ones the community has said, with its dollars, it wants there. If, as the article above indicates, students want grocery stores close by focusing on international foods, they need to patronize the two on the north side of the square or International Foods at Murdale. Saying you want those type of stores in Carbondale, then not patronizing the ones here is a sure bet to discourage others from opening in the community. Business open where they see other businesses being successful. That's why a Walgreen's is opening on the west side while a Chili's is opening on the east side. They are not moving into a location where they think they will fail. Like follows like.

Days of May

Rich Davis, a DE staffer at the time the SIUC campus shut down during the May 1970 riots, briefly writes about his memories of the time. His fondest memories: Gus Bode and Spudnuts. And why don't we see Gus Bode in the DE anymore anyhow?