Last week, The Palm Beach Post ran a story – on the front page of its local section – about the UP's twisted situation. It mentioned many of the same facts reported in the SunSentinel, Huffington Post, and (for reasons I still can't figure out) the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
But it also contained this revelation about student media director Marti Harvey...
Harvey said that she was brought on board to generate revenue for the student media outlets and ultimately make them independent.
I never knew that. And it's the worst news yet.
Or as the business manager at a large college daily in California emailed me that same day...
From what I have read, it seems that she has an editorial not business background. When they filled the position, why didn't they focus on someone with an extensive business background? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Nor me. While it's been hard to figure out Marti's journalism experience, her business experience is even more suspect.
According to her resume, she advised a community college paper in Texas and "worked with [a] student advertising representative to increase ad revenue from $4,000 in academic year 2005-2006 to $20,000 in the academic year 2008-2009."
But the UP's budget – before the current Student Affairs regime started trimming it each year – has topped $100,000. Even now, it stands at $80,000. So Marti's best year at Eastfield College is one-fourth of the UP's worst year.
But here's the devastating news: FAU's student newspaper has gone independent twice before. And failed both times.
Even worse, Marti and Student Affairs vice president Charles Brown know about that but choose to ignore it.
They know because I've told them.
In the mid-'80s, FAU's Atlantic Sun moved off campus and became the Independent Atlantic Sun. At the time, I was editor of The Independent Florida Alligator at the University of Florida. The Alligator still touts itself as the largest student newspaper in the country, independent or otherwise.
So the editor of the Atlantic Sun called for advice about moving off campus. I simply said, "Don't do it."
The Alligator has always lived paycheck to paycheck. During my tenure as editor, I had to cut the newsroom budget $20,000 – in 1987 dollars.
But the FAU editor told me that his administration and SG were trying to control the paper, and he'd prefer fiscal uncertainty to editorial insecurity.
Sadly, a few years later, the newspaper was back on campus, rechristened by SG with the chosen-by-committee name of University Press. Once again, the students chafed under administration and SG control and moved off campus. This time, it was called the Free Press. It didn't last a year.
The problem is all about real estate. It's our location, location, location.
In Gainesville, home of the University of Florida, there's precious little competition for an ad dollar. Besides the local daily and a few start-ups that blink in and out of existence, The Alligator has the print market cornered. It's also been around for 105 years.
In South Florida, the UP fights for market share and mind share against two big dailies (Post, SunSentinel), two alt-weeklies (New Times, City Link), a chain of community weeklies (the Forum tabs), two community college papers (BC Observer, PBSC Beach Comber), and a host of so-called "nightclub magazines" (944, Closer, Six Degrees, to name a few).
When I spelled this out for Brown during our very first meeting four years ago, he said, "That's not the kind of thinking that'll get it done."
But no amount of right thinking will. Brown announced back then, and Marti has repeated since, that the goal for the UP is no less than a five-day-a-week independent broadsheet – even though two larger universities in our area can't pull that off.
The Beacon at Florida International University in Miami publishes three times a week during the school year. The Miami Hurricane at the University of Miami publishes twice a week. I've spent time in both newsrooms, talking to their advisers and their business managers. I've implored Marti to do the same.
Marti has yet to visit another school in our area. Or any other professional publication. She has, however, met with the UP editor to announce her grand plans.
When EIC Karla Bowsher pointed out that there's only one independent student daily in Florida, Marti replied, "Well, Florida has to do better."
Or Student Affairs has to listen better.
TOMORROW: Comment tarry.
