Elise Adams and her crew at The FREE PRESS are used to dealing with adversity.
The computer crashes minutes before the paper is ready for the printer. The story planned for the front page fizzles a day before deadline. Crucial photos are shot at the wrong exposure.
This is journalism boot camp, and the students who can stand it get the best education possible while providing a great service to the USM community.
However, these past three weeks have been more difficult than usual. First, the staff learned the newspaper’s expenses are projected to exceed revenue by about $11,000 by the end of the fiscal year. Then the Adviser decided to resign. Now some senators are talking about changing the way the paper receives student activity fees.
In the midst of all this, Elise and a half dozen staffers have returned from “vacation” and are cranking out another 20-page paper.
As often happens, out of adversity comes strength.
Elise and her crew reacted quickly and responsibly to the administrative and financial problems. Together they cut expenses and devised some sophisticated solutions. As a result, the paper should be solvent this year although a small amount will likely be used from reserves.
This is a time of challenge for the newspaper, but it is also a time of opportunity.
How is the paper going to survive financially in the future?
How can students be convinced to work at the paper when there is no journalism program at USM and the responsibilities are so immense?
How can the professional employees aid the paper and its staff at the lowest cost?
Some of these issues are already being addressed.
The FREE PRESS ad sales are down like professional newspapers throughout the country. The staff is working on ways to lure more advertisers. The chair of The FREE PRESS Advisory Board, an advertising manager at the Portland Press-Herald, is helping.
To help systemize billing and collections, the paper hired an office manager last year, whose salary, by the way, just about matches the deficit in the budget.
There is also an opportunity to make The FREE PRESS operate more smoothly internally. I hope the University officials and students who search for a new adviser will thoroughly explore how The FREE PRESS is run and will consider revamping the responsibilities of the executive editor and the two professional positions-the adviser and the office manager.
Changing the roles could make the paper run more smoothly and with less angst. Currently the executive editor, regardless of skills, is ultimately responsible for both the editorial and business sides of the paper. This is a huge responsibility, which few students are qualified to handle. Professional papers don’t run that way: why should The FREE PRESS?
The editorial and business functions could be separated, leaving the editor the time to focus solely on the content of the paper. The business side could be run completely by a professional who would also supervise the advertising staff.
A more professional business component would enable the adviser to focus solely on the journalistic aspects of the paper, concentrating on training, critiquing the finished product and counseling on ethical, legal and management issues. It would be easier to find an adviser with a narrower set of skills, and the time commitment and salary could be less.
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So what does the adviser do anyway? How can she allow those embarrassing mistakes to get in the paper? She is the real control behind the paper. She is not controlling the paper enough.
I have heard all these comments in the last four years.
The FREE PRESS is a student-run newspaper. The students’ failures are theirs and so are their successes. They learn a lot more from their actions than they do from my golden words.
The adviser trains, coaches and cheers but ultimately it is the students who decide which stories, headlines, advertisements, editorials, letters to the editor, and photos appear in the paper. I do not read stories before they run unless I suspect something may be libelous.
This is the norm in the college media advising world.
Another adviser once said: “Our students have a right to suck.” I wouldn’t use those words, but I agree with them. Blunders make me cringe but usually those are the mistakes the students will never make again.
When they succeed, their creativity can make them very proud.
A few weeks ago, the photo staff needed a picture of Mike Mullett, director of Commuter Student Services, putting a gift certificate on a car in the Marginal Way parking lot. When the photo didn’t materialize they figured out another way to convey the concept of “parking god.” After discussing the ethics with me, they blew up an image of Mullett and superimposed him in the parking lot. It is unethical to distort an image in a newspaper, but if it is clearly altered and not misleading, it is considered a photo illustration. That’s how it was labeled.
They were proud.
So was I. Lesson learned.