Daily
Forty-Niner magazine begin to experience
change
By
Jon Lowell
Daily Forty-Niner
After
54 years, the Daily Forty-Niner will be
undergoing some major changes this fall.
Forty-Niner Publications, which includes
the newspaper and the University Magazine,
will make the transition from being lab-generated
to student-generated publications.
Up
until now, the articles that appeared in
the Forty-Niner Publications were filtered
through the journalism department. Journalism
students were required to write a minimum
number of stories by the professor as part
of a writing lab. Starting this fall, student
editors will assign stories to writers,
thus opening the doors to all students who
are interested in writing stories.
"The
pool of applicants consisted of about six
hundred students in the journalism major,"
journalism department chairman William A.
Babcock said.
"Now,
however, you can draw from the talent pool
of 35,000 students."
The
goal is to increase the quality of the paper
by expanding on specialized stories and
getting more students across campus involved.
Allowing students to make broader decisions
for the paper is the model that virtually
every campus newspaper nationwide has adopted.
Cal State Long Beach has been one of the
few exceptions.
"This
is a good step towards the way the paper
should be," Summer Forty-Niner news
editor Jamie Ouye said.
The
journalism department's faculty will still
be proactive with the publications but the
articles will be completely generated by
the student editors and writers. This will
cause writers to make decisions on their
own instead of making them for a professor
in a class. The faculty also voted on changes
to the department's curriculum that should
be in place within the next year.
Funding
for the news publications has been generated
by advertising dollars, however the way
the advertising department conducts business
will not change. The changes that are being
made to the Forty-Niner Publications should
create changes in the amount of revenue
that can be produced through advertising.
"We're
very excited about this," Advertising
Manager Beverly Munson said, "Our market
is unique in that it consists of students
that range from ages 18 to 26."
Since
the students will run the newspaper and
the magazine, it should make the publications
more appealing to a wider audience on campus.
"It
will take some time to get to where we want
to be," Editor in Chief Rachelle Youngman
said. "In the long run the change should
be good for the paper and the students."
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