I hate yellow walls — specifically, mustard yellow. The shade exists in the liminal space between happiness and dirt, and it almost never goes with the furniture. The Appalachian’s current newsroom, which we moved into in 2022, has approximately 10 walls that are mustard yellow, but they are plastered with posters, whiteboards with caricatures drawn on, awards that The Appalachian has won at student media competitions over the years and other scraps that are left to remember our history. 

When I assumed the editor-in-chief role, I took the liberty of covering my office wall — also mustard yellow — with copies of The Appalachian’s print edition. I made sure to feature pieces of my own and my friends’ who have since graduated, as well as big moments in the paper’s history — the first Hispanic Heritage Month edition from 2023, the first Black History Month special section from 2022 and The Appalachian’s 90th-year-celebration issue. Sometimes, in the rare slow moments of my job, I catch myself looking up at the wall with a swell in my chest — any member of The Appalachian is cemented in history within these pages, me included. 

On Jan. 16, I stared at mustard yellow walls in a boardroom when our adviser told the management team and me that the printer we had worked with for many years was shutting down in two weeks. Our windows facing into the student union have “Print is Not Dead” posters on them. But for us, right now, it is. 

Mullen Publications, which has been in business for 80 years and works with other university papers, as well as businesses and nonprofit organizations, has been a cornerstone of The Appalachian’s print edition for as long as I, and many other editors, can remember. Seeing their company van pull into Plemmons Student Union lot on delivery day, knowing the back is full of an edition produced with strenuous work, is a feeling that I cannot describe. 

What I can describe, though, is how that feeling is the exact antithesis of the one I felt in that mustard yellow boardroom, where the weight of the deafening silence and the slow, rocky, collective breaths from my management team and me was all I heard for minutes once I realized that after our February print edition, there was no guarantee for another one. 

The Appalachian is not alone in this revelation, though we are in a unique position. A Pew Research Center analysis shows that even the switch to a digital focus from the top-50 news organizations in the United States does not pick up in audience traffic, with a 20% decline in average monthly traffic from 2021 to 2022, from 11 million to 9 million. The same analysis asserts the fact that advertising revenue continues to decline steadily, with nearly half of newspaper companies’ ad revenue coming from digital sources. This analysis, however, is for top performing news organizations; for a local newspaper, let alone a student run newspaper, the conditions still apply. 

The Appalachian has adjusted to tariffs imposed on paper imports by adjusting the average number of pages across our print editions and becoming even more selective with the content we place on those pages. We have pushed multimedia content, increased our social media presence and designed our readers’ choice edition to function based on online voting. 

But for me, what gives me purpose is flipping a physical page and seeing my name in the byline. And as long as I am in this position, I will fight to keep it that way — but we need your help, too. 

Shortly after our phone call with Mullen Publications, the management team decided to preemptively cut our March print edition in favor of changing Best of Boone 2026 to be a year-long issue on stands in a lastminute partnership with a printer that another student-media group on campus uses. Our May print edition, however, is still up in the air in terms of how it will be produced and to what extent it will look the same as in previous years. 

In full honesty, I don’t know what’s next. What I do know, though, is our community — and our newspapers — are resilient. It is only with your help that we can get there. Your support, whether financial or not, means everything. If you feel so inclined, there are various ways you can financially support student journalism so we can keep our promise to you: to tell your story with your words and your experiences as truthfully and accurately as we can. 

Help us continue to be able to cover our mustard yellow newsroom walls with our print editions.