If there's anyone who can attest to the lack of news that goes on surrounding Penn State during the summer it's me. There were periods over the last few weeks were I didn't write anything for days. Of course, I don't actually go out and "interview people" and "have sources" and "fact check" like the big shots over at The Collegian. But wow they are hurting for news, and today's paper is just sad. Times are tough and Collegian Editor-in-Chief Terry Casey knows it. I blame myself really, I'm not giving you guys anything to write about.

If you aren't in State College to check it out let me tell you about today's Collegian. It's four pages. Four pages! Those four pages consist of: nine articles (two of which are from the AP), two columns, one letter, an editorial and some sidebar stuff (there's also the Venues mag, but I'm not counting that. But hey if you want to, that has five articles). By the way, there are also zero ads. ZERO! I've never seen such a thing. There aren't even any classifieds. Again I'm only talking about The Collegian, not Venues. But even in Venues there are only seven ads (plus classifieds). What the hell's going on over there?

This is Arts Fest week, and regardless of what I say about it, there are a ton of people in town. A ton of people who will probably be picking up The Collegian. A ton of people who will be picking up the Collegian and could be looking at ads. Is there even a business staff over there at this point? Look, the entire industry is screwed at the moment. You've got layoffs coming left and right and no one knows what the hell to do with the Internet and freaking Google is taking all the advertising. So, I understand it's difficult, but come on this is ridiculous.

So today's paper is tiny, and Terry Casey, in his Editor in Chief blog, admits as much.

"For those veteran readers in the audience, you might have noticed something new about us. The old 'have you lost weight?' line actually garners a truthful answer. Yes, we have. But that doesn't mean we're happy.

"In the summer, we have a much smaller population in town. Low circulation, small staff, little advertising, few stories, fewer news pages -- it's not the Collegian of semesters past."
 

So Casey admits that something's up this summer. So, what is it? According to him it's the "small staff" that's the problem. Well, actually it's not a problem:

"We don't complain too much about the thin look; we wouldn't be able to do as good of a job covering a fall semester's worth of news in the summer with this size staff, anyway."

Terry! What are you saying? First you're not happy about the size of the paper and then you're not going to complain? Which is it? I'll tell you what you should do ... start complaining! This is horrible. Seriously, a branch campus would be embarrassed to put this thing out. At this rate you're going to be an online only "newspaper." And come August, you won't have me giving your reporters story ideas.

Oh, and just some advice ... have your reporters post on their blogs more than once a week. Is it really a blog if it's updated weekly? Eh, what do I know.