Battle erupts over Auburn University student paper
The first huge clue for most students that something was up at their student paper came last Thursday, when they found this headline over the nameplate on page one:
The Plainsman is dying, and we thought YOU should know.
It was a editorial that noted the paper has been declining for years and is no longer adequate, in terms of staffing, newshole and features.
The interesting part started with this passage:
We feel this decline in coverage isn’t because of a lack of effort from the students who come in weekly to volunteer for the publication, but because of the failure of the business side of the newspaper to generate revenue.
We have lost confidence in the current management of the business side to reverse this dangerous trend. While these are hard economic times, we believe new management of our business operations is needed now. It is because of this belief, we feel our general manager should be replaced by those who hired her.
The Plainsman — a weekly — went independent in 1984. It funds itself not with support from student fees, but totally by advertising dollars sold by a student sales force, supervised by a general manager. The editorial stated:
Because The Plainsman’s business staff, under the guidance of the general manager, is not and has not been selling a sufficient number of ads, we have been publishing papers of decreasing page count, out of pocket, for several years.
If we continue to operate as we do now, The Plainsman will be unable to support itself within two years.
A very unusual move, basically trashing your management on page one. We can think of a number of other papers that would love to try something like this.
But oh, what a firestorm arose. Want some entertainment today? Scroll through the comments attached to the online version of that editorial.
Asim Ali wrote:
The key phrase you used is “If we continue to operate as we do now…” Easy solution there is don’t continue to operate as you do now … For you to blame the entire lot of the Plainsman’s woes on the general manager is ridiculous, and good luck trying to get a job in the real world with this in your portfolio.
Jeff Thompson wrote:
As a current member of an editorial board, I like to think this never would have made it to my desk. Why you would trash yourselves in such a juvenile manner is beyond me … This piece of childish, tattle-tale drivel is the complete opposite of productive, active problem solving and should get you all removed. And after reading this, it’s a sure bet that I won’t be hiring any of you.
Lauren Glenn Manfusco wrote:
I find it incredibly disturbing to see that Auburn’s future generation of journalists has so little awareness of the current climate of the business that they can’t see that it’s not just the Plainsman, it’s newspapers everywhere who are hurting for advertising revenue.
And so on. We’d estimate that more than 80 percent of them accuse the staff of being whiny and unrealistic, and advise the staff to dump the print product and publish online. Newspapers big and small across the country are hurting, the comments say. Deal with it.
Earlier this week, the business manager did indeed retire…
…Or so it seems. The links to the articles themselves are broken. Brittany Whitley of the Opelika-Auburn News reported last Friday:
Business manager Jan Waters had no comment on the staff’s call for her ouster. She said questions should be directed to Johnny Green, the AU dean of students.
Kristin Oberholzer, editor of the Auburn Plainsman, also had no comment.
“We said what we wanted to say. We’re not elaborating on this any further,” she said.
Ed Williams, faculty advisor for the Plainsman, did not return a phone message left at his office.
So this week, the student editors came back with a second editorial – this one presumably on the editorial pages, where it belongs. In it, the staff points out issues it either didn’t have space or the inclination to explain in its piece last week.
It complains the paper’s web site isn’t under the control of the editor. And it also states that committee appointed by the dean — which was supposed to meet to discuss options — never met and the student communications board has failed to meet on a regular basis.
These factors apparently have affected editors’ efforts to make positive changes. Or so they seem to say.
Read last week’s front-page editorial — along with all the comments — here. Read the follow-up piece here.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Wow…interesting to say the least. The editorial board has a giant set of brass cajones.
Just playing devil’s advocate here, and not saying the students were right, but can’t you imagine the possibility that the GM is a lifelong cog in the bureaucratic wheels of Auburn Univ.? I’m talking about the kind of dead wood that should long ago have been cut loose, but because of seniority or the hassle of firing someone from a university position they were allowed to continue plodding along in all their less-than-mediocre glory.
I have no idea if that’s the case, but after reading the Auburn PR professor’s blog, it certainly seems the situation has been bubbling for a while.
On some level I admire the students’ chutzpah because I think all too often decisions at newspapers are made based on how many negative phone calls someone MIGHT get the next day.
Again, I have no idea whether what was said is true, accurate or fair, and I’m not suggesting all newspapers should start all-out assaults on people positions of authority, but I imagine more people are clamoring for their daily Plainsman these last few days.
February 19th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
What Telford said.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Rule No. 1… it’s not about you. It’s about the news.
Something similar to this (different issue) happened around the time I was near there.
The move was lauded, awarded. Editor was praised heavily.
Didn’t like it then. Don’t like it now.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
What Olds said.
And the incident in question was the infamous blank front page with the words, “Speak Louder, we can’t hear you,” or something of that sort.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
My apologies, it should be “Speak Lowder.”
February 22nd, 2009 at 5:49 am
don’t know about this particular situation, but it has been argued in the past that the new web-can-find-anything world is eliminating student papers’ traditional role as a training ground where future journalist can, do, should make mistakes and learn from them. on that point I support the plainsman.
another comment caught my eye, too. paraphrase: the second piece that, presumably appeared on the editorial page where it belongs…
did we not just heap (well-deserved) praise on the freep for editorializing on 1a? ok, auburn’s issues don’t compare to the dismantling of an entire city’s economic structure, but just as the freep’s duty is to the Detroit area, the plainsman’s duty is to the auburn campus. I don’t see much difference in bravery on either paper’s part.
the creep did what the did in the inerest of readers and the community, the plainsman did the same, and with potentially more dire consequences: the total death of auburn-only, auburn-centric news.
I ramble and admit I’ve not read the editorial, but what it says, whiney and woe-is-us or not I applaud the bold move; the desperate move. just as I did with Detroit. could the complaints have been better-written? I don’t have to read it to know. no offense to auburn’s hard-working journalists, but they’re students. most of the paper, controversy or not, could be better written. and again, I come back to the point that these kids will learn from this, and I make a sour face at those who have decided point-blank that they’d never hire these kids. I hope you pass on the next Woodward or royko.
woo. I got chatty. sorry
February 22nd, 2009 at 5:56 am
stupid iPhone autocorrect: creep=freep. while dorsey does scare me sometimes, I’d not associate the word creep with either him or his employer. Huschka’s another story. *shiver*