Referendum
heightens long standing newspaper rivalry
By
Rachel Furlong
Online Forty-Niner
Copy Editor
There has been an ongoing rivalry between the Daily Forty-Niner and the Long
Beach Union Weekly for decades. However, it has gained momentum in recent months
in the midst of an attempt by the Daily Forty-Niner, in collaboration with
Dig magazine, to get a referendum passed that would increase student fees by
$4 in order to help fund the two publications.
The growing intensity of the rivalry is apparent in the Feb. 27 editorial published
in the Union that said, “Basically, if the campus chooses to give the
Daily Forty-Niner a quarter of a million dollars, it would be wasted, paying
for piss-poor articles, and a full-time paid staff that is failing to do what
we’re doing for free — keeping our paper financially afloat.”
The Daily Forty-Niner published an editorial April 25 in response to the Union.
“
The real concealers of the truth are those at the Union Weekly who consistently
mix in pieces of fact with fiction in order to get across whatever agenda it
has any given week,” the article said.
Patrick Dooley, editor in chief of the Union, said the rivalry between the
two publications started off friendly this year, and became more serious when
the referendum came out.
However, the rivalry is nothing new. It dates back to 1977, when a group of
students from the Daily Forty-Niner decided to start their own newspaper after
journalism department Chairman M.L. Stein decided to turn the publication into
a laboratory newspaper, where students would be working on the newspaper under
faculty members in a classroom setting. Until then, it had been a student run-newspaper.
“
Before the department took over and made it a lab, students were editors and
made all the decisions,” said Debbie Arrington, who was city editor at
the Daily Forty-Niner and one of the creators and original editors in chief
of the Union. “Then suddenly it became formatted and controlled; there
was a teacher in charge of the copy desk.”
Shortly after the department turned the Daily Forty-Niner into a laboratory
paper, Arrington and fellow Daily Forty-Niner staff member Jack Shinar decided
to start their own, student-run newspaper, which they called the Union.
“
ASI backed us immediately. They felt there should be a student voice countering
what the Daily Forty-Niner was doing,” Arrington said. “After it
became a lab paper, the Daily Forty-Niner became a faculty voice.”
Shinar said he wanted to start another newspaper on campus because he felt
the chairman was taking the department in the wrong direction.
“
I really didn’t approve of the lab concept. It created tinted journalists,” Shinar
said.
John Hollon, editor in chief of the Daily Forty-Niner at the time, said the
way he sees it, Shinar was unhappy with the Daily
Forty-Niner because he had not gotten the editor position he had applied for.
“
The Union was basically a bunch of disgruntled journalism students lining up
with ASI, who were unhappy funding us because they didn’t like what we
were writing,” Hollon said.
After getting ASI to agree to help fund the Union, getting approval from the
administration and finding an office to work out of,
Arrington and Shinar finally began publishing the Union Weekly the last four
weeks of spring 1977.
And the rivalry began.
“
When you have an open and free press, there’s going to be controversy,
and there was,” Arrington said.
According to Shinar, the journalism department disapproved of the Union so
much that students who wanted to write for them and still fulfill most of their
journalism requirements had to write under pseudonyms to avoid being given
poor grades by their journalism professors.
Although the rivalry still exists today, the situation has changed considerably
since 1977.
In fall 2002, the Daily Forty-Niner went from a department paper to an independent
campus newspaper. The Daily Forty-Niner no longer received funding from he
department, nor did it restrict writers to journalism majors. For the first
time in over 25 years, all students, as well as members of the academic community,
were welcome to contribute to the paper without enrolling in a journalism class.
Meanwhile, over the years, the Union has lost the strong support it once had
from ASI.
“
The Union is the bastard child of ASI,” said Josh Kaplowitz, who worked
on the Union from 2001-05, holding positions such as music editor, entertainment
editor and managing editor. “They hate giving us money.”
Kaplowitz said there was definitely a rivalry between the two publications
when he worked on the paper, and he remembers participating in verbally bashing
the Daily Forty-Niner. However, he said the rivalry was a friendly one.
“
The Union teases, but it’s all in good jest,” Kaplowitz said.
Editor in chief of the Daily Forty-Niner. Jamie Rowe said she thinks the rivalry
is one-sided.
“
I don’t let it bother me here, I just let them do their thing and I do
my thing,” she said.
Despite the rivalry, both Dooley and Rowe said they think there is enough room
on campus for both publications.
Dooley said for the most part, the two newspapers don’t really tread
on each other’s turf. One is a daily, one is a weekly, and the content
is different.
Kaplowitz said, when he was managing editor of the Union, he did not consider
the Daily Forty-Niner to be an economic competitor because the publications
were different in terms of content,
“
We didn’t really go after the same ads. They are a little more newspaperish,
so they got more local ads, and we got more entertainment ads,” Kaplowitz
said.
Rowe said she also feels it is good to have both papers on campus.
“
It’s good to have competition,” Rowe said. “It’s good
to have an alternative voice.”
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