Business behind the bylines: Inside a student newsroom's sales team
At Texas A&M’s The Battalion, ad sales make up 85% of revenue
Student journalists juggle a packed schedule each week — conducting interviews, writing stories, attending meetings, breaking news and laying out newspapers.
But behind the scenes, often overlooked, are non-journalist students working just as hard to make it all possible.
They’re making cold calls to businesses, chasing leads, developing media kits and navigating corporate contacts to keep the newsroom financially afloat.
“Our business desk is all about bringing money in and making sales,” said Hayden Arevalo, business manager of The Battalion at Texas A&M University.
At The Battalion, a four-member, student-led business team generates about 85% of the newsroom’s revenue through ad sales — ranging from local businesses in College Station, Texas, to national brands like Uber Eats, H-E-B and Amazon.
Their efforts help fund the publication’s $65,000-$80,000 annual budget, covering the costs of printing 30 newspaper issues and six magazines each year.
In this Q&A, Arevalo and Assistant Business Manager Hamsini Mahadevan spoke with The Nutgraf about what it’s like running the business side of a student publication, the challenges of working with advertisers and how they’re adapting to the digital shift.
Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Can you walk me through a week of the business department?
Arevalo: “A lot of our focus right now is selling our Maroon Life magazine. We find that our advertisers get a lot of exposure through those magazines. We get a lot of, we get a pretty high pickup rate with those. It's also the product that makes the highest returns. It doesn't cost a whole lot to print those magazines, but we can sell a lot of space and we can sell it at a pretty high price and people will pay it.”
Arevalo: “For our student representatives, it’s a lot of them making a bunch of cold calls to local businesses in our College Station and Bryan area. Right now, we’re calling for spring sports, so we're targeting massage places, gyms and healthy eating spots — things like that. We have a spreadsheet where they track all of their calls.
“They're new so they’re making the calls with me in the office. I’m coaching them through it and I’m telling them what I think they’re doing well, what I think they could improve on and just trying to give them pointers on how their conversations are going with their clients.
“They’re going to send a lot of follow-up emails with them and make follow-up calls. They also handle leads. So, we get leads to our email. And I’ll distribute them evenly and I’ll kind of give them pointers on what I think they should buy just because they’re newer. Hopefully, toward the end of the semester, they’ll start to pick up on and they can do that on their own.
“For me right now, I was actually just putting together a presentation for my boss because we’re looking into buying an ERP (enterprise resource planning), which will hopefully make doing business here a lot easier.
“So we’re spending a lot of time tracking our sales and scheduling through spreadsheets and Google sheets. And I think that we would need ERP going forward if we’re going to expand our business, then we need a software that can handle that.”
Why did you want to be involved in this side of student media?
Arevalo: “I’ve always liked looking at businesses and how they operate — for example YouTubers, I tell people I like watching videos like Mr. Beast and things like that just so I can see a genius in how he operates a business. I love that kind of stuff, really.
“I heard about an opening here and I applied. I got to meet my boss (the previous business manager), and he was a great guy, really enthusiastic about The Battalion. He passed that passion along to me.”
Mahadevan: “For me, I’d say that I was interested in getting sales experience and developing professionally. I saw this job posting and applied. Since then I’ve learned so much about student media and so much about professionalism. I think the passion developed after I got here, but it was a very cool experience.”
What is your approach to securing local versus national advertisements?
Mahadevan: “I think we try to target local businesses — lots of people who are located in the College Station area. That’s something that we really care about, and especially because The Battalion is kind of an Aggie tradition.
“It’s easier to reach a decision-maker. National clients are difficult to reach, but we do have a few in our papers. We also have different ways that we get connected with national clients. But yes, we do try to get local clients.”
Arevalo: “When we’re making these calls, we're always talking about finding places that will benefit from advertising. We target a lot of smaller places like she said because they’re easier to make a decision and they're the ones that need the advertising.
“So we try and keep it really personable, not super businessy. We understand the demographic here in College Station and it’s a lot of like what I think my family is like.
“These types of business owners just want to be talked to like other human beings and not just like business transactions. I try and convey that and tell our reps to do the same when they’re making these calls.”
Any partnerships or campaigns that you’re proud of?
Arevalo: “We work with a few. We work with Uber Eats. Amazon has advertised with us. H-E-B — that was a good one, it took a lot of work.
“And another big one that I’m hoping we’ll get soon is — I’m trying to work with someone from Dell and I just sent them a proposal. Hopefully, that goes through. I have a good feeling about it though.”
Mahadevan: “Mine was working with the League of Women Voters, and that’s something that I’m really passionate about — increasing voter registration, especially for young people. So it was really fun to work with them and see the different strategies to advertise on that.”
How did you find these clients?
Arevalo: “With these big corporations, it’s a lot of calling one person, getting in touch with another person and then just trying to work your way up the chain to get to someone that can make a decision.
“For us, though, we also work with a group called Flytedesk. That organization acts as an ad agency so they’ll have contacts at Uber Eats and Uber Eats will tell the Flytedesk people they want to advertise this much in these places among universities. Then they’ll tell us that they have Uber Eats waiting to hear back from us.”
Mahadevan: “It’s a combination of being reached out to and cold callings. The League of Women Voters reached out to us. But for H-E-B, I had to go and dig through the contacts and see who I could reach out to and then call corporate numbers and things like that. Each client is so different.”
What are some challenges you’ve faced?
Arevalo: “It's a lot of work and school life balance. I had to take 12 credit hours a semester just so I could focus more on here. Hopefully, if we end up going through with this ERP, then it'll make the time spent here less.”
Mahadevan: “I think the biggest thing is that we’re students. A lot of the struggles come with that. Sometimes people don’t take us seriously just because we’re students.
“Being in college is also very hard. You have to manage school work and different organizations. This adds to that. And I think just any struggle that comes with the sales job, most importantly getting rejections and then having to overcome it.”
How has the shift to digital impacted your advertising strategies?
Arevalo: “It’s a lot easier. Once we mention social media or when we bring up the website or newsletter, you can actually see people's ears perk up. When they hear those words, it’s like a whole different conversation. Suddenly, we’re not just talking about a newspaper anymore, which is kind of crazy to see.
“We’ve realized that we need to focus more on our website and digital presence, especially our newsletter. I don’t want to give too much away, but we’re hoping to do some big things with our newsletter. We were rated the No. 1 college newsletter in the nation. And we’re working with a new group to refine our newsletter. Last semester was the first time that we worked with Overlooked, which changed the formatting of our newsletter and made it nicer. So we do realize that’s an area of growth.”
How do you pass down knowledge and ensure continuity as staff graduate and move on?
Arevalo: “Right now, it’s a lot of trying to find people who are passionate about doing these things and will work hard to make this business reach its potential that I know it can get to.
“But a lot of it is just coming in here and talking. We're always just talking about ideas going back and forth with what's going on. And then I think through communicating with each other and kind of growing closer together on a personal level. I think that can really translate.”
Mahadevan: “I think that’s important and this is how our business works. But the past business managers generally didn’t document everything that well. So we’re trying to make sure that we have those systems in place — making sure there are spreadsheets with correct and updated information for future sales reps.”
💬 I want to hear from you! What challenges have you faced in generating revenue for your newsroom and how have you addressed them? Email me at nutgrafnews@gmail.com.
📢 Extra! Extra!
Are you a high school student journalist who wants to connect, collaborate and grow?
Check out High School Press Central, an initiative aimed to be a global resource hub for high school journalists. Leanne Yoon, a high school journalist from South Korea, created this. HSPC connects student journalists and offers tools for managing publications.
If this sounds valuable, you can join here. And stay tuned for The Nutgraf’s collaboration with HSPC soon!
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