Responses
j. c. casey, 10/26/2004, 11:33:16 AM
hi jeff: my university has a student population of about 1,500 (we're a public liberal arts college), and the newspaper is funded by a portion of "student activities fees." No specific amount is designated. Historically, the university (not the student government - senate gets a separate "student association fee") pays for the printing of the paper and a few other expenses. I've been advisor since 2001. prior to that, the paper was physically in the university's office of public relations under the supervision of the director of pr. we moved the paper to new offices in a separate building when I became advisor. i'm blessed with a wonderful university president who is absolutely supportive of a free student press, and I try to maintain a strictly advisory relationship. To my knowledge, the paper has never had an advisory board, although I am in the process of trying to get one established. I don't know if your paper has a charter or mission statement (if you don't know either, perhaps a little research might be useful). But I absolutely believe that student government should have no power over the newspaper. If your administration is receptive to the idea of an independent student paper, perhaps you can separate the paper from being financed through student government to a separate account where (as we do here) some of the student fees are designated to the paper directly without having to go through the student government. However, my guess is that student government will fight you if they find out you're trying to make an end-run around them. Please feel free to follow-up if you think I can help in any other way.
Stephen Yeargin, Editor - The Pacer, 11/7/2004, 1:42:55 PM
Jeff,
Whatever it takes, please, please get out from under the Student Government. By the SGA holding the purse strings to your organization, you've set up a huge conflict of interest.
For example, the SGA decided to hold an event that utterly flops, costing the organization a great deal of money. As an editor, you are obligated to report the fact that the event was a failure, and how much it cost the SGA/student body. In your line of questioning, you get the response "You aren't printing this, are you?" the moment they realize that it is horrible PR for them.
What ensues is a bitter argument over what the purpose of the newspaper is, and whether or not you can be objective about SGA related matters. The higher ups in SGA will no doubt try to stop you from printing anything bad about the organization by tugging on those purse strings.
Get out. Get out. Get out.
Nothing you do in your pursuit of the truth should land you in financial peril. If you can't get out from under them directly, have a signed agreement that says that any change in funding has to be approved by the administration, and is subject to protest by the newspaper's staff (as in, have it in the SGA by-laws). That gives you an extra level of protection, as courts have held that any decrease in funding of a newspaper for censorship purposes would be violation of free speech, as long as it is done by the college itself, not other students.
Form a "Student Publications" board to oversee that funding. SGA can have a voice (two or three members out of about a ten member board), but should not be the final word.
Stephen Yeargin
Executive Editor
-
The Pacer
UTM's Student Newspaper
http://pacer.utm.edu/
Michelle Garcia, Editor, The Oswegonian, 11/8/2004, 11:46:10 PM
Oswego State student government is really cool with letting us cover them, mainly because they understand that it's our job. However, I would suggest you would do the same as suggested above and get out.
I do not know if we would be able to foot the entire bill ourselves if we were no longer an SA organization. Our annual budget is roughly $38,000 and they give us about $7,000 of that while we make up the rest by selling ads. If you can look at your budget, and see if your paper can survive on ads alone, I would certainly consider it.
I also think the idea of having a student publication or even media advisory board would be higly beneficial to your group as well as others. Oswego State has a weekly newspaper, a yearbook, a literary magazine, a radio station and a television station. Bringing the leaders of these groups together will show the government that your paper is not alone in needing the space to do what you must.
Good luck with your paper.
courtney, 2/28/2005, 7:10:11 PM
We also get about 40 percent of our funding from SGA. While we don't really get complaints about our coverage of them, we do get lots of nasty letters to the editor from the VP about our "unacceptable" content. The last letter even threatened to "stop supporting" us because of a fictional sex column we ran. They are constantly trying to censor us and accuse us of being "liberal media" because of the companies that choose to buy advertising space.
We cannot go independent, though, because advertising is on a sharp decline and our printing cost increases every year.
However, by getting support from readers (students), you have an advantage because student government's purpose is to represent them.
Courtney Cloyd
Wichita State University
The Sunflower
Kaua, 3/15/2005, 1:25:35 PM
Aloha,
Here in Hilo, we pay seperate fees for everything.
Student Government,
Student Activities,
Student Publications,
Board of Media Broadcasting,
Our Health Center,
Recreation Center and
Our Campus Center Fee.
Each organization has it's own Board to over see the groups within it's own 'domain'.
Each group is responsible for their own fees.
Graham, 3/21/2005, 2:23:40 PM
I just posted this on a more current forum topic, but it applies to this as well:
I was recently elected the first chair of Hamline University's Student Media Board, a board comprised of elected students, the top editors of each media organization (newspaper, yearbook, literary magazine) and their advisers.
In no way did we involve our student congress in the decision of breaking off the media organizations--we just left. Each organization decided to not seek funding from the student congress last year and instead assembled the board based on a draft constitution I wrote myself. In our first year, we struck a deal with the university administration that put us on par with the student congress in terms of setting and collecting our own fee.
Currently, we are in the budgeting process for our first full year (next academic year) under the approved constitution and formalized budgeting procedure.
To give you an idea of a timeline on all this, we first began talking about creating a media board when I was a freshman and working for the newspaper. I am now a senior and we won't have the whole system running exactly as it should until next year. It's been slow going to build a consensus in the admin and the student congress, but once we wrote the constitution, it took about a year to get a temporary board elected, get a first year's budget out the door, publish for a year under the transitional regime, and later this spring we'll be having an open forum where people can address media issues as well as college-wide elections for next year's media board.
The only role congress has played is that it is now cleaning up its own by-laws to remove any mention of us media organizations!
For more info, please email oracle@hamline.edu and we can send you a pdf copy of our media board constitution and offer any helpful pointers you need.
The key, I think, is that the newspaper and other media organizations have to want to be independent. I think we have an ideal situation now, and our main concern is perpetuating the fledgling board so that it continues to have budget authority over the student media orgs and they don't get dragged back under the thumb of the student congress.
Marcus, 7/1/2005, 1:01:42 PM
We are about 50 percent SGA funded by SA fees and the other half by advertising. Unfortunately we are unable to go out on our own but I think the system we have works decently. Each year we submit a budget request to them and it is brought before a Finance committee for approval. Now granted over the years our funding has decreased and we never get all that we ask for but conisdering that SGA fields requests for about 5 times the funding that is acutally available to them we are funded pretty good. The good news is that after the finance committee approve the budget, it goes to the senate for approval and then to the SGA president for approval. The SGA president can and has been known to send it back (veto) for revision. I would suggest getting to know your SGA president and get his bearing on student press. As well as a final last ditch effort our university president can veto the budget as well.
Now as for handling the finances we have our own business manager that does that as long as we stay under that magic number they gave us we are fine and they do not mess with us.
Our SGA a few years back tried to put one of their members on our staff in a position they called SGA Liasion. We fought that effectively and then they tried mandating editor selection as well and we went around them again. We creatd a board of individuals for selecting the new editor. Now this board does not suprevise the current editor, only selects the new one. Basically a selection committee comprised of our Comm Arts Dept Chairman, the faculty advisor, the outgoing editor in chief and one other journalism instructor.
This has worked really wel for us and since these people do not supervise the or direct the new editor in chief then we minimize the accusations of censorship and bias.
Marcus
The Voyager
University of West Florida
