Rollins College has officially terminated its print subscription of The New York Times. To justify, they have provided full-access to the New York Times website to all students, faculty, and staff via computers or hand-held devices.
The New York Times is a daily newspaper that is read worldwide and awarded the most Pulitzer Prizes. It has the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United States between its printed and digital content combined.
To access the digital subscription, faculty, staff, and students alike are able to log on to accessnyt.com in a web browser, select Rollins College from the ‘Find School’ Menu, and continue the steps of creating a free New York Times account. You can log in to your New York Times subscription from anywhere, anytime, on any device that has Internet access.
The Olin Library is responsible for the decision to go from digital to print. Digital archivist at the Olin Library, Rachel Walton, confirmed that the cease of print subscription was a result of the “sheer cost.” She also believes that students prefer to view content online and that this is a positive motion for both students and faculty. Walton emphasized
“We’re trying to keep up with the digital age… this is something that is happening across the nation.”
An assistant professor in the English department here at Rollins, Dr. Paul Reich, gave some insight on the shift. Dr. Reich said, “I appreciate the fact that I no longer have to pay for a subscription to The New York Times digital content… So now I can get all the digital content that I want for free since Rollins is paying for it.” He even went as far to say that “it seems like a nice perk to be a member of this educational community.”
However, Dr. Reich did play devil’s advocate by stating, “but there is something great about having a print version of the paper there because it forces you to see a headline perhaps, in a way that you wouldn’t see if you’re not automatically navigating to that site on your phone or your other device.”
Dr. Reich continued, “if you’re walking to the campus center, you’re confronted with whatever the editors of the New York Times have deemed important enough to be headlined at that particular moment. So everyone that walks into the campus center, whether they want to or not, they look down at the paper and they see that headline…”
Dr. Reich said, “the thing that we’ll probably miss the most is that we’ll not have that forced confrontation which will be a problem.” However, Dr. Reich suggested a way to compensate for this loss. With the online subscription there is an option to receive the headlines for the day via email.
Dr. Reich said “I get an email from The New York Times giving me the headlines of the day and it has different sections.” These sections include daily news covering topics including world, nation, sports, technology, movies, books, and more. He concluded by saying, “that’s kind of like the newspaper’s delivered to me, through email.”
Dr. Jana Mathews, an assistant professor of English at Rollins, commented that “the shift also implicitly acknowledges that our society’s reading practices have changed. Print newspapers promote a linear reading model where individuals start on the front page and more or less work their way through to the end.”
Dr. Mathews linked news to music when she described the substitute of the methods that we use to consume online news. “Instead of listening to an entire album from beginning to end, people just download the specific songs that they want.”
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