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.