Gawker reporter Hamilton Nolan has had enough of college newspapers and would probably only consider them useful if shaped into sanitary napkins. Much like media at large, print journalism at the college level has become an often unprofitable endeavor, at times constipated with journalistic seriousness, also known as static self-indulgent pretense. College newspapers are cumbersome, cannot be obtained without leaving the dorm, and yet they survive, much to the annoyance of the Gawker blogger.

According to Nolan:

My only experience on a college newspaper was a mandatory one-semester period, the highlight of which was the adviser rejecting most of my stories for not being "serious" enough… Now college papers, like real papers, are having serious financial troubles. How to save them? Don't save them!

The University of California- Berkeley and Syracuse University both had to cut their print papers back to four days a week recently, since they were losing money. Howard University had to stop printing its daily paper completely for several months earlier this year, until it was bailed out to the tune of $48,000.

Of course, all these papers continued to publish online. The editor of the Syracuse paper said that "online readership was as high as it usually is" even when print publishing got cut.

So tell us again: Why the **** is it necessary for a college paper to publish a print edition at all?

The thing is, printed college newspapers, like cockroaches, can swarm around the country, forage for a measly existence comprised of just getting by, and be stomped on by the big boys, but they refuse to really die off. Sure, they aren’t necessary, but then, neither is reading any publication.