Newspapers are a hot medium

Well, on college campuses, at least.

Apparently, 76% of college students read their campus paper at least once a week -- a pretty good penetration figure. And since college students are a fairly attractive demographic, advertisers are taking notice. And so are other media:

One of the most notable examples of the trend occurred in late summer, when a subsidiary of MTV, one of the country's best-known youth brands and part of the Viacom entertainment empire, bought College Publisher, a company that runs websites for about 450 college papers.

So solid are the economic prospects for the student-run newspaper at Florida State University, FSView & Florida Flambeau, that it was acquired in August by a mainstream newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat.

It's really not that surprising. The big metro dailies are doing badly, but smaller papers serving communities (and focusing their coverage on their community) are doing better. And college campuses are communities.

"There's no more local paper than a campus paper," said Dina Pradel, general manager of Y2M, which founded College Publisher in 1999.