Viacom subsidiary College Publisher has dropped language in its contract with the University of Hawaii-Manoa's student newspaper that forbade any stories critical of the firm or its corporate partners, the Honolulu Weekly reports. The dispute was made public last week when the alt-weekly reported the student paper's website had been down since February due to the stalled contract talks. The provision was removed the next day, according to the Weekly. College Publisher provides an online publishing system for the websites of more than 450 university and college newspapers.
Sometimes word of mouth is a more effective way of promoting a paper than a print ad. That's why some alternative newsweeklies send street teams out to bars, movie theaters and cultural events to hand out freebies and stir up interest in their papers. When they dispatch their street teams to public places, alt-weeklies like NUVO and Boston's Weekly Dig are relying on a centuries-old marketing technique the music industry revived.
