Brief:

• Snapchat is bringing college newspapers to Discover, the app's section of professionally produced videos and news articles from media companies. The student newspapers can post content using Campus Publisher Story, giving them a similar look to magazine-style editions created by companies like ESPN and BuzzFeed, according to Recode.
• The first four newspapers to debut on the platform are the Daily Californian from UC Berkeley, the Battalion from Texas A&M, the Daily Orange from Syracuse and the Badger Herald from Wisconsin. Snapchat's parent company Snap plans to add more than two dozen total newspapers in the next three months, a spokesperson told Recode. The content will be geofenced, limiting their distribution to readers near the respective campuses.
• The newspapers will produce one story for the platform each week — and will include ads — with a pivot toward video news, Fast Company reported. Ad sales will be shared between the publishers and Snap, but the company didn't disclose details of the split.

Insight:

College newspapers have long been in decline amid universities' budget cutbacks and a shift in ad revenue away from print publications to digital media like search engines and social networking apps. In recent years, dozens of student newspapers have reduced the frequency of their print editions to focus on digital formats, according to the Poynter Institute.

By partnering with a popular app like Snapchat, the college newspapers can develop an additional source of revenue and reach a student audience that's been one of the earliest adopters of social media, a channel becoming increasingly used for Americans' news consumption. Pew Research Center released a study that found that two-thirds of Americans get some news from social networks. The percentage of Snapchat users getting news from the app grew to 29% this year from 17% in early 2016. Eighty-two percent of news readers between 18 and 29 got news from Snapchat, a higher percentage for the age group than Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn.

This move is Snapchat's latest in its goal to beef up content in its Discover section with a greater emphasis on news. In the past few months, Snapchat launched daily news shows by CNN and NBC. The social media platform also produces an original politically focused news show called "Good Luck America."