Through journalist friends of mine in Tuscaloosa I've discovered an interesting system of how The Tuscaloosa News gets a sizable amount of their content. Interns. They pull from The University of Alabama and the journalism school instead of hiring full time reporters. The T-News has set up an internship program where they take on a dozen interns each semester. For every 90 hours the student works they receive 1 hour of academic credit and $250. So at 12 interns a semester and three hours each the T-News will get 3,240 work hours for $9,000 without benefits.

Because there are only 12 spots for interns the T-News can still be somewhat selective to assure they will be getting honest, hard working, talented reporters. This type of partnership could be applied to many college towns with small to mid size papers. It can be mutually beneficial to both the students by gaining professional experience and to the papers by getting content at a lesser rate than a full time salary.