Michael Oliva walks into the student newspaper office in the Pryzbyla Center just before 2 p.m. and checks his e-mail. He’s got class in a few minutes, but the sophomore at Catholic University, business manager at The Tower, needs to check in on how advertising revenue is looking this week.

“It’s not good,” says Oliva. “National ads are down across the board and on campus departments who need to slash their budgets see the advertisements as expendable.”

The phone rings, Oliva hopes it’s an ad.

“Tower office,” he says as he picks up the phone. It’s the dean of students office. They’re running down a letter to the editor on the editorial last week.

“Why not just e-mail it? Now we’ve got to re-type it,” says Oliva. “We should start charging for letters to the editor,” he jokes.

Today they’re reviewing for a midterm in class, so he hustles out the door.