UC Davis student newspaper holds news hostage to raise student fees
We have recently featured articles about students calling for certain news items or opinions not to be published if they were “offensive”.
However, the University of California – Davis student publication is not printing any news as part of a fascinating new marketing strategy to promote a fee increase.
Except for the masthead, the front page of the most recent issue of The California Aggie is empty above the fold. The huge swath of white space featured in the University of California, Davis, student newspaper is not a printing error or editorial protest. It is an eye-grabbing funding push.
Aggie editors are aiming to convince the UC Davis faithful to accept a $9.30 increase in their annual student fees to help keep the paper alive — and ensure news on campus does not fade to nothing but white space. Apparently, without the added fees support, the ink-stained Aggie might truly morph into nothing more than a memory.
Over the past five years, the paper’s advertising revenue has been in absolute free-fall, depleting its budget reserves from a half million dollars to less than $20,000. The number of paid staffers — and the amount they receive — has simultaneously dropped. And the paper has also shifted from an almost-daily (four times per week) to a weekly in print to help offset costs.
As The Davis Enterprise reports, “Faced with ad revenue that hasn’t recovered after falling off a cliff, the student newspaper staff is asking its fellow UC Davis students to approve a $3.10-per-quarter fee that would raise an estimated $272,800 annually. For the measure to succeed, 20 percent of the student body must vote — and 60 percent plus one must support it. If it fails, the 99-year-old paper will die.”
Yowza. I guess we ain’t mincing words.
There are sideshows bubbling beneath the surface of the student body vote — including the language of the measure and how often it should come up for review — but the bottom line from the editorial team’s perspective is that the money is needed to keep the Aggie afloat.
Without $9.30 From Every Student Every Year, UC Davis Campus Newspaper Will Die (College Media Matters)
Comments
I assume the name of the paper is “Aggie”. Usually when one says “Aggie” they’re referring to students of Texas A&M University.
This reminds me of what Rush Limbaugh was saying yesterday about journalism school – how it used to be ingrained in any program that advertising and getting ads were taught, re-taught, and then taught again….because they are the lifeblood of a free press.
The segment is out there – I will try to find it and link to the transcript or video, if I can find it.
Here is what I was thinking of – Rush talks about journalism and free press, journalism school, and ads vs. “government funding”:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/02/21/how_tv_and_print_journalists_ended_their_feud
Here is another related segment – the discussion was in response to a parent whose daughter is at Univ. Missouri School of Journalism. Very relevant that this involves colleges’ teaching curriculum for journalism today:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/02/21/j_school_grad_mother_who_has_a_daughter_in_j_school
Here is another relevant segment:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/02/21/see_i_told_you_so_media_not_upset_by_notion_of_fcc_monitors_in_newsrooms_journalism_schools_behind_the_idea
(NOTE: these may not be chronological – I just grabbed transcripts from the archive)
A clarification:
In the first link, the correlation to this post is that the publishers/staff of the school paper think that the school should pay for the cost, or they’re not “able” to print the “news” (above the fold=news). This is all too similar to assuming the funds should come from the “government” via some subsidy from taxpayers; rather than going out and getting ads to make printing the paper at least a break-even proposition, they seek the funds from their “governing body” – the school administration – via a “mandatory student fee.”
The students who publish the paper automatically believe that the “news” should be paid for by someone else, but don’t understand that that gives their “funding supplier” a form of controlling force over them: cut the funds, and the paper folds.