After 30 Years Downtown, Daily Collegian Plans to Move Back to Campus

After 30 years in a university-owned building in downtown State College, Penn State’s student newspaper, the Daily Collegian, plans to move back to campus in the new Donald P. Bellisario Media Center, which will open in the fall of 2020 on the site of the Willard Building.

Penn State unveiled earlier this year plans to demolish the nearly 100-year James Building at 121-123 S. Burrowes St. and replace it with a new, $52.8 million building that will serve as a hub for the Invent Penn State entrepreneurial and innovation initiative.

Collegian editor-in-chief Kelly Powers wrote on Thursday that the newspaper was invited by College of Communications Dean Marie Hardin to rent space within the new Media Center. Powers wrote that the Collegian will have a private, 852-square-foot, third-floor suite facing an open newsroom where the newspaper will have dedicated desk space, but will share the area with other student news organizations.

Before that, however, the Collegian will need an interim home. Demolition of the James Building and new construction are expected to begin in November 2019. Securing a transition space is the Collegian’s ‘immediate focus,’ if the construction schedule continues as planned according to Powers. 

Powers wrote that the new space in the Media Center — significantly smaller than what the organization has had at the James Building — ‘will provide many challenges as well as new opportunity.’

‘I would be remiss not to note that some of the staff feel hesitant about the seemingly forced exodus and limited options,’ Powers wrote. ‘The culture of the office will surely shift with the decrease in space, as students often spend a sizable amount of time on the sunken couches and pass time working at the open desks of the James Building.’

She did, however, write that there is a sense of optimism and opportunity in being closer to students in the heart of campus, in a new, state-of-the-art facility.

Prior to the late 1980s, the now 131-year-old Collegian was located on campus in the Carnegie Building.

This College of Communications video shows a virtual tour of the new Bellisario Media Center.