College Papers = Ad Dollars

When I was advising a college newspaper a couple years ago, our campus also had The New York Times, USA Today and the local daily free around campus. They were pretty well read, but still nothing like the campus paper.

Campus papers are successful for exactly the reasons captzulu stated. It's very similar to local weeklies doing well while metros struggle -- I subscribe to the local weekly where I live because it offers information I can't get elsewhere; I don't subscribe to the metro I work for because I can't see any reason to spend money for information I get earlier for free online.