Keller @ Large: BU Daily Free Press Lives On

BOSTON (CBS) - Major kudos to auto magnate Ernie Boch Jr., Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly, and the other donors who came up with the money to save the Boston University Daily Free Press from extinction.

The Free Press had run into the same problems facing many newspapers these days, declining ad revenue causing a life-threatening spiral into red ink. Earlier this week the students running it announced that they'd have to fold the 44-year-old paper if they couldn't raise $70,000.

Thanks to donor generosity, they raised that and more.

This is very good news for BU, its students, and us.

For the kids, working at a campus newspaper can provide some of the best life-lessons they'll ever get at school, teaching skills like how to ask questions, how to see through bogus answers, how to be tough and how to be fair, not to mention how to write and meet deadlines.

OK, maybe it won't teach them to dress for success, but that's what graduate school is for.

But you don't have to have a BU connection to be glad the Free Press will live on.

The local colleges and universities are some of the most important institutions we have, major employers who have a huge impact on our community. But we have limited access to the details of what's going on with them, and outside news organizations generally don't have the resources to cover them.

That's where independent college newspapers come in, keeping an eye on institutional finances, labor relations, campus crime and and other issues that resonate way beyond the campus.

The BU Free Press at its best keeps watch on one of our most important universities. Thanks to those generous donors, they will continue to do so, and we're all better off for it.

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