Forty-Niner
faculty meeting looks toward future
By Karl Peterson
On-line Forty-Niner
As
the dust settles after Wednesday’s journalism
faculty meeting, more information has become
available concerning the future of The On-line
Forty-Niner.
At the center of proposed changes is the
desire to preserve the student voice and
allowing freedom of thought within the newspaper,
professor William Mulligan said.
During the meeting, members of the faculty
formed sub-committees to assess different
student newspaper models throughout the
state and nation. One sub-committee will
study curricular and financial implications
of models in the state and another will
study implications of different models throughout
the country.
The current model of the Forty-Niner is
as a lab/departmental publication which
is funded almost entirely by advertising
revenue with the remainder coming from the
Associated Students Inc.’s disbursement
of Instructional Related Activities funding.
Under other potential publication modes,
the newspaper would have to be completely
financially self-sufficient.
At moments during the meeting the atmosphere
was tense, Mulligan said. Mulligan also
speculated that the tension was created
because students and staff were not allowed
and because the meeting was called on short
notice.
“It happens in life all the time,” Associate
Dean Frank Fata said regarding the atmosphere.
“That is why we continue to say, we’ve got
to communicate, we’ve got to sit down, we’ve
got to establish what it is we want to do
and achieve.”
Feta said the meeting was called on short
notice because previous attempts toward
change had stalled and that if there was
any further delay had the potential to stall
again.
The sub-committees will report their findings
to the entire group in another meeting in
the next few weeks.
Many students and staff in the journalism
department were upset that they were not
allowed in Wednesday’s meeting.
Students and staff will not be admitted
to the upcoming meeting either, journalism
department Chairman William Babcock said.
“It is essentially a faculty meeting to
discuss a faculty issue,” Babcock said.
“That doesn’t mean that we won’t consult
with other people.”
The idea that there may be a problem with
the current lab/departmental format of The
Forty-Niner is nothing new. Faculty members
have been discussing the need for investigation
about potential changes for several years.
“It goes back any number of years,” Fata
said. “It goes back to our concern for a
journalism department that was hit by retirements,
floods and practically a biblical pestilent.”
The current desire for change is partially
due to the many new faculty members in the
journalism department.
“The expectations when there are that many
new people in a department is that they
will look at themselves and decide where
it is they are going and how they are going
to get there,” Fata said.
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