The Magazine Publishers of America hopes to turn more college students into magazine readers while introducing them to a digital form of publishing - and is giving away thousands of digital subscriptions to magazines.

The digital editions, reached by a link within an email message, is a replica of the magazine, complete with text, photos and advertising, writes the New York Times (via MediaBuyerPlanner). Participating publishers are hoping to convert college students - a coveted demographic for advertisers, and a difficult one to reach, as they move frequently and often leave no forwarding address to which publishers can send subscription offers.

But a bigger, perhaps more difficult, issue is that current college students grew up with the web and may be less comfortable with print. The initiative will test the viability of digital delivery.

An opinion poll released in May by the BBC, Reuters and American think tank The Media Center, showed that, at least as far as consuming news, today's youth turn more to the web than traditional sources such as print and television.

Five magazines and schools are participating in the initiative: The School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California will get Premiere; the Parsons School of Design will receive Elle; the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies will receive Foreign Policy; the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University will get BusinessWeek; and Notre Dame's college of engineering will be offered Popular Mechanics.

The initiative will have no bearing on the individual magazines' rate bases.