Spring Break
Dear President Jones
Angela Mensing
Issue date: 4/11/08 Section: News
Dear President Jones:
Please honor the Inkwell staff's freedom of the press rights by restoring the $14,760 that SGA cut in student activity fee funding from our 2008-09 budget.
The reason that Al Harris and SGA say they cut our funding was because we are going to charge for display ads next year. Harris said that they determined that they would need "over $8,000" to "maintain" the same level of advertising in the Inkwell.
The rates we are charging next year range from $25 for a 1/8 page ad to $100 for a full page ad.
The value of SGA and CUB advertising for the past 29 editions only comes up to $577.50 - and that includes an ad that they requested last semester that we forgot to include in the edition so I added the value of a full page ad to the total. Furthermore, the value of SGA, CUB and Student Activities ads since summer of 2005 up till the April 4 edition is less than $2,900.
Their claim that us charging them for display ads next year is the reason they cut our overall budget is a pretext for the real reason they cut the student activity funding. Over 95 percent of the budget hearing consisted of complaints about the content of the newspaper.
"Student government should never be in a position of dictating the content of a student publication, even if the publication's funding comes through student government. The newspaper is just different from the choir or intramurals or the debate team or any other student organization; the newspaper performs a watchdog function, and indeed it often is the only watchdog over student government," said Esquire Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. "I would analogize this in the 'real world' to a corporation that pays its independent auditors' fees. The corporation pays for the audit and hires the auditors, but it cannot -- and should not -- be allowed to dictate what the auditors say in their report, or else it's a worthless audit. That's how we got Enron."
Please honor the Inkwell staff's freedom of the press rights by restoring the $14,760 that SGA cut in student activity fee funding from our 2008-09 budget.
The reason that Al Harris and SGA say they cut our funding was because we are going to charge for display ads next year. Harris said that they determined that they would need "over $8,000" to "maintain" the same level of advertising in the Inkwell.
The rates we are charging next year range from $25 for a 1/8 page ad to $100 for a full page ad.
The value of SGA and CUB advertising for the past 29 editions only comes up to $577.50 - and that includes an ad that they requested last semester that we forgot to include in the edition so I added the value of a full page ad to the total. Furthermore, the value of SGA, CUB and Student Activities ads since summer of 2005 up till the April 4 edition is less than $2,900.
Their claim that us charging them for display ads next year is the reason they cut our overall budget is a pretext for the real reason they cut the student activity funding. Over 95 percent of the budget hearing consisted of complaints about the content of the newspaper.
"Student government should never be in a position of dictating the content of a student publication, even if the publication's funding comes through student government. The newspaper is just different from the choir or intramurals or the debate team or any other student organization; the newspaper performs a watchdog function, and indeed it often is the only watchdog over student government," said Esquire Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. "I would analogize this in the 'real world' to a corporation that pays its independent auditors' fees. The corporation pays for the audit and hires the auditors, but it cannot -- and should not -- be allowed to dictate what the auditors say in their report, or else it's a worthless audit. That's how we got Enron."
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Marry
posted 4/11/08 @ 11:33 AM EST
I just think the Inkwell's behavior has strongly crossed the line. These statements with the articles and 1 page of the paper are extremely juvenile. (Continued…)
Kevin
posted 4/13/08 @ 8:10 PM EST
You simply do not have a case. I noticed that the Inkwell could not get a lawyer to represent them. SGA is not censoring the paper in any way. From what I have heard they simply said that no one reads the paper, it is poorly written, and it is not worth the money that they were providing. (Continued…)
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