By Jennifer Davis
BYU students have the opportunity to make suggestions for The Daily Universe while taking an online survey. The survey will allow the directors of the paper to know what readers want, what they”re thinking and how they can better serve them.
“We are hoping to engage our students in The Daily Universe as much as possible since we believe this newspaper is the voice of the BYU community,” said Robb Hicken, managing director of The Daily Universe.
The paper hired a third-party research company based out of Portland, Ore. to put together the base of the survey. This is the third year the paper has used this company, but this year is different from past surveys, said Casey Stauffer, advertising director of The Daily Universe.
“Last year it took 45 minutes to take the survey,” Stauffer said. “It took a long time and we got a lot of complaints about it. There was a lot of useless information along with useful information. I think we burned out the students.”
This year the survey consists of 45 questions, and 10.5 minutes is the average duration time.
“The survey this year is more customized to our campus,” Stauffer said. The survey company was more flexible in allowing the departments to edit the questions.
The questions include buyer inquiries, questions on what sections are read the most and text spaces to type in how the paper can be improved.
The buyer inquiries are useful to the directors to know what to advertise to the students
“It helps us know what kind of advertising they want to see, what is relevant to them and what is not relevant,” Stauffer said.
The BYU Bookstore, a major source of advertisement for The Daily Universe, also has interest in what the results are.
“Our only involvement is trying to understand the readership of The Daily Universe, and that helps us in our advertisement,” said Roger Reynolds, director of the BYU Bookstore. “We are interested in the response, though we are not initiating it, to help us know how to advertise, where to advertise and what to think about advertising.”
Advertisement is one of the things changed due to the response of the past surveys. There are now fewer advertisements and they are also more spread out per page.
The editorial side of the paper has also made some changes.
“We have increased the size of the letters to the editor and opinion pages, and there are more sports as requested by students,” Hicken said. “There is also more national news and world coverage, but we realize we could do better.”
There will also be 45 large pizzas awarded to randomly selected winners who participated in the survey.
The survey is found at pulseresearch.com/newsnet2006/
