Dose’s relentless pursuit of student eyes
Ryerson has denied Dose Magazine’s request to place racks on campus in an attempt to protect student media.
Ashley Spegel, The Eyeopener (Ryerson University)
Photo courtesy of CUP.
TORONTO (CUP) — Over the past month, Dose Magazine reps have been circulating free copies to Ryerson students outside Dundas subway station in Toronto, generating competition between the university’s student-run papers and the national publication.
Dose — “Canada’s first daily newsmagazine” — started publishing last April. Its current events, local news, features, celebrity gossip, movie reviews and streeters target readers between the ages of 18 and 34. That’s why campuses, such as Ryerson’s, are prime distribution spots.
Earlier this year, Dose requested permission to put more boxes and racks on Ryerson’s campus, but the administration rejected its request in an attempt to limit competition between free publications and student-run papers.
“My marketing department approached Ryerson about putting Dose boxes and racks on campus but we were turned down flat,” said Darren Driscoll, Dose’s distribution reader services manager in Toronto. “I would love to get permission to put racks or boxes in and around the university but we haven’t been given it.”
So the folks at Dose decided to use an in-person, face-to-face approach to attract readers. Dose uses everything from TV and the Internet, to text messaging and street hawkers to advertise its paper.
So far it seems to be working. Ryerson students who read Dose said they read it simply because it’s handed to them and it’s easily accessible.
“I read Dose a lot,” said first-year business student Kristin Tzekas. “I don’t read the school newspapers because I don’t see them being circulated like this.”
That is also the reason Krystal Gordon, a first-year criminology student, reads Dose.
“I like Dose because it’s there and it’s free. I also really like the horoscopes and some of the random articles,” she said. “If (Dose) wasn’t available to me then I would probably read the campus papers more.”
This is what Robert May is worried about. May is the executive director of Campus Plus, a national advertising company that provides ads to Canadian student-run newspapers. He said university papers are competing for the same readers and advertisers as Dose.
“Dose has the opportunity to talk to the same advertisers that we work with,” said May. “Because the publication is produced by media giant CanWest, they have the ability to bring television and other media together to promote Dose. This combination is very powerful as Campus Plus doesn’t have the ability to do something like that.”
Ads in campus papers pay for their production and paper costs. May said if advertising firms think their ads will reach a wider audience through national publications like Dose, then they might choose to discontinue their ads in small student-run papers.
Dose is also looking for readers at other Ontario universities, such as University of Toronto, Carleton University in Ottawa, and York.
Unlike Ryerson, York’s administration accepted Dose’s request to have boxes and racks on campus this year.
“When (Dose) first arrived on campus, we were pretty pissed,” said Chris Jai Centeno, editor-in-chief of York’s campus paper Excalibur.
“No one really reads Dose at York because it’s pretty crappy,” Centeno said. “It looks like someone puked all over it because all the information in it is very scattered. There’s no focus, which is why no one reads it.”
The Varsity is one of several student-run publications at the University of Toronto. Editor-in-Chief Graham F. Scott shares Centeno’s opinion of Dose.
“I don’t find Dose to be a compelling read or a great paper,” said Scott. “If [Dose] were to start doing dynamic or interesting pieces maybe I’d be worried. But at the moment they don’t cross my radar that often.”
“We thought they were going to be a threat in terms of our pick up rate,” said Centeno, “but I haven’t seen anything change in relation to that or our readers.”
But readership and advertisements aren’t the only things Dose is competing for with campus papers.
On Oct. 28, Dose ran a story on porn targeting hip young women, an article almost identical to an editorial The Strand, another U of T newspaper, was preparing to publish.
“It was a coincidence that they thought of the same story as we did,” said Aine O’Hare, The Strand’s editor-in-chief. “They had the same idea as us and they happened to publish it first. Since we only print once a week and they’re a daily, they beat us to it.”
Dose representatives visit university campuses to find out first-hand what students would like to see in a publication. They also look keep an eye on their competitors.
“We look at campus newspapers, we look at magazines and we go online to see what students want,” said Dose publisher Noah Godfrey. “We are avid media consumers. We read what students read.”
“I don’t think [Dose] will affect us because, as a student paper, we focus on student news which is centred around student issues,” said Mark Master, editor-in-chief of The Charlatan at Carlton University in Ottawa. “Dose is flashy and targets young people but for student-centred stories, Dose doesn’t have any of it.”
