|
|
ACP Forums
This is an archived ACP Forums thread.
Elizabeth Hendler, 2/16/2005, 11:44:52 AM
Our newspaper staff has been paid by stipend each semester for as long as I can remember. We are a weekly tabloid paper that runs 24-28 pages. We operate under a university department, and we are required to bring in a certain amount of revenue. After we hit that mark, the university pays all of our expenses. Until this point, the editor in chief could decide how to split up the 35,000 per year allocated for staff payment and how it was divided between the editors. We have about 15 paid editors and managers.
Starting this fall, the school will no longer be able to pay us by stipend. Our budget manager said the way we operate now is actually in violation of labor laws. We are now trying to figure out an alternate system. The only offer she could come up with was for hourly wages. If we had to stay within the 35,000 budget with the campus minimum of $7/hour, we would go way over budget paying our editors and managers. We were told we can't do that, so I am being put in a situation where I might have to ask our staff to under-report their hours (something I'm not sure I'm comfortable doing!) or cut down on the number of student staff we pay.
Additionally, federal law says hourly-paid students can't work more than 20 hours per week. The editor and news editor easily work more than this. The new system would also prevent our students from keeping second campus jobs they have (because you can only have one hourly campus job). This will put a big financial burden on our staff and make it very difficult to recruit.
Please share how your newspapers pay the staff, especially papers that are university-funded. I appreciate any insights to help us overcome this change in budget operations!
Elizabeth Hendler
Editor, The Setonian
Seton Hall University
www.setonian.com
hendleel@shu.edu
Responses
Michelle Garcia, 3/7/2005, 9:34:48 PM
Our budget is submitted with out student association every year and we have an allocated budget with an income line (our ads). We're given $36,000/ year and we are expected to earn $30,000. In that comes our incomes. We are allocated a certain amount every year. As editor in chief I make $1200 a year which is split into paychecks every 2 weeks... $60/week is sooo helpful! The managing editor, copy editor, photo director and gets a little less and the the section editors get $450 per year (which is measly, but we're a poor school haha). That's basically how it works.
-Michelle
SUNY Oswego
Rob V., 4/13/2005, 3:15:29 PM
Be thankful your staff gets paid at all! I have basic weekly hours I allot based on position, but they are all granted the (very small) minimum work study wage. No one's paying their bills with this money here.
As an undergraduate who worked on his university paper for five years, I never got a dime, as a writer, editor, or editor-in-chief.
Rob Velella
Red & Black adviser
Washington & Jefferson College
Marcus Ditty-The Voyager, 7/1/2005, 12:36:12 PM
We do actually do a variation of what you were origianally doing (stipends). We pay our editors in lump sums also and ran into the same problems concerning labor laws but eventually found a way around that. We are funded by SGA Activity and Service Fees. We talked with our SGA and Student Affairs department and worked out a deal. What we actually do is not pay our editor a salary or stipend. We give them a Leadership Grant, Student Affairs pays it out and then back charges our account. This way it comes in the form of a non-taxable lump sum. The only drawback to this system is the depending on the size of your grants, is that it could possibly cause some issues with financial aid. When this happens we arrange to pay them as a contract worker. I am not sure if this is available to every state but FL can pay people designated as an OPS Employee in a lump sum basically like you would pay any contract worker like some one giving a lecture series or doing consulting work.
Vanessa, 7/2/2005, 8:07:53 PM
I understand the aspect of under-reporting hours worked. At our paper, the editor gets Ky. minimum wage (about $5) for 20 hours, section editors get it for 15 hours, assistant editors get 12 hours and staff writers get 5 hours. Most of them, until you get to section editors and the editor, work the hours for which they are paid once you factor out time they spend goofing off of just hanging out in the office.
But the section editors and the editor work well over their 15 and 20 hours. It's not the greatest thing to work 45 hours and get paid for 20, but those of us who know what we get paid for and still work over are the ones who would work there whether we got paid or not.
The first week of school in 2004-05, the editor and news editor worked 86 hours. They got paid for 20. Some would call us crazy. I call it dedication.
It's the people who are dedicated like that who make the difference. It sets them apart from the ones who are simply there for the paycheck every two weeks.
Rutherford Rankin, 7/27/2005, 5:23:05 PM
I agree with Vanessa. You should want to work at the paper whether or not you get paid...it's a matter of passion. Also, I'm not so sure that Elizabeth's budget manager is correct in stating that they are in violation of labor laws. If that were so then our paper would have been in trouble long ago because we operate pretty much the same way. Our staff members are paid flat fees for their work (editors get salaries, staffers get paid per piece). Of course, we have about 75,000 dollars in student fees backing us. Perhaps one way of getting around the labor law problem is to change the status of all staff positions into "internships". This way you could technically pay the people their stipend amount and not worry about the hours they put in. As long as you have dedicated staffers who will work under that type of agreement. This system seems like it would work for your staff. I don't see how it could possibly violate any labor laws because there are tons upon tons of unpaid internships so if they can get away with it then a college paper should be able to get away with this system.
|
|
