Print isn’t perfect. It is slower. It may not compete with the speed or reach of digital platforms, but perfection is not what people are looking for when they walk toward the newsrack. They are looking for something else: the feeling that a story matters enough to sit with it. 

When freshman journalism student Daniel Davila passes the Kinsolving newsrack on Tuesdays and Fridays, he usually stops to pick up a copy of The Daily Texan, the official newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin, before heading to class or going across campus.

He skims first, then decides what is worth reading. He said the limited format helps him decide what deserves his attention, and he turns to online sources only when he wants to read further. 

“It just feels better,” Davila said. “Online, there are just too many choices. I can read digitally, but I’d rather stick to physical media.” 

Dana Herrera, a junior studying history, described a similar habit shaped by her time working at the Texas Capitol, where printed legislative materials arrive each morning. 

She said her relationship with print began in high school, when she followed her school newspaper more intentionally. 

“With my phone, I’m more inclined to look at other things,” Herrera said. “There’s a whole web of something else attached to it.”

For sophomore political communications student, Khoi Nguyen, print is part habit, part expectation. He picks up each issue of The Daily Texan when it is released, a routine that began when he started writing for student publications in high school and carried into college journalism. 

“If I’m writing these papers, I should be reading them,” Nguyen said. 

Over time, that habit became less about obligation and more about experience. 

“You get that tactile experience of, ‘This is what I have in front of me’,” Nguyen said. “You won’t get a notification while reading a newspaper. It’s just itself. It’s basic. It’s there.”

That difference also shapes how he thinks about what lasts. Nguyen said digital information can feel temporary, especially as content changes or disappears over time, and print is a way to maintain history. 

“I feel like if you have a physical record…You know it’s printed, it’s been there,” Nguyen said. 

Casey Johnson, a sophomore studying government, first picked up print during long junior hockey road trips, when reading a newspaper became an alternative to movies or sleeping on the bus. 

Today, he continues the habit with a subscription to The Wall Street Journal. He said print requires a different kind of reading than digital platforms and forces him to truly engage with the text. Print’s permanent nature is part of what gives it meaning, Johnson said. 

“You can’t go back and edit a newspaper once it’s been printed,” Johnson said. “You did do this. You can’t change this.” 

Mia Caldwell, a freshman studying early education, said her relationship with print is focused on collection and memory. She often reads magazines like Vogue or Time during the summer and buys additional publications from places like Half Price Books, usually choosing niche magazines centered on specific interests. 

Caldwell said she enjoys building a personal collection over time, often trading magazines with friends and revisiting older issues as tangible memories.

“I operate on such nostalgia at all times that I really want to build the collection of things that I’m interested in,” Caldwell said. 

She said that interest is connected to her family, with whom she grew up flipping through magazines saved by her mother and grandmother. 

“It feels like your own little memory,” Caldwell said. “Like someone else looked through this before you.” 

For her, print carries a feeling of continuity, something that can be kept, shared, and returned to over time. She said that losing print would not just be about its replacement by digital media, but about something familiar disappearing from everyday life. 

“People assume we don’t want these things,” Caldwell said. “And I feel like at our core, we really, really crave being like other generations — in the sense that they had such physical and tangible things that were emotional and connective.”

Across testimonies, one idea returned again and again. 

Print is not chosen for speed or convenience, but for the way it changes how reading happens. 

Students described different relationships with it: habit, memory and accountability. Some use it to focus on a single story without distraction. Others value its permanence, the sense that what is printed cannot be changed. Others connect it to collecting and memory, where each issue builds over time. 

For the students who still reach for it, the value is in the act itself: holding something finished, knowing it will not update, and deciding that, for a moment, this story is enough.