Union
Weekly dominates student media budget
By Joseph Serna
Online Forty-Niner
Assistant City Editor
According to The Union Weekly’s Web site, the Union’s creation
in 1977 was inspired by a growing contempt by some students for Cal State Long
Beach’s first student newspaper, the Daily Forty-Niner. The Union’s
mission was to be the newspaper created by the students, for the students.
Accepting that responsibility, the Union is funded by part of the mandatory
$44 Associated Students Inc. fee students pay every semester.
“
I think they’re paying for their voice to be heard,” said Patrick
Dooley, edior in chief of the Union. “I think they’re paying for
very, very high quality entertainment every week, and they pay cheap.”
The cost of the Union breaks down to about 67 cents a student per year, according
to ASI Executive Director Richard Haller.
In the ASI 2006-07 budget recently approved by the senate, the Union’s
anticipated total expense is listed at more than $71,000, which is around 31
percent of all ASI student media’s total expenses.
The other two student-produced media funded by CSULB students are K-Beach Radio
and the Gold Mine Yearbook which take about half the total budgeted expenses.
Though the Union takes 50 percent of the total expenses among all ASI student
media, ultimately its expense to the students and to ASI is nominal when compared
to the corporation’s entire budget.
Of the more than $5 million budgeted for ASI this coming fiscal year, student
media costs take just over 4 percent of it, according to this year’s
operating budget.
On top of that, similar to many of ASI’s subsidiaries, the Union is expected
to create its own revenue to offset its total expense to the corporation.
For the coming year, the Union is expected to generate $47,000 in total revenue,
$30,000 of which must come from non-taxable sales, or advertisements according
to the approved operating budget.
For Dooley, it is a lofty, but possible goal.
“
It sounds like a marathon,” Dooley said. “I hope we have more people
working on it to hit that mark. I think the people that are asking these things
are sitting behind a desk with no idea of what goes into it.”
That revenue should lower the cost of the Union for ASI to slightly more than
$24,000.
According to financial statements for the Union from 2001-06, the Union was
only able to surpass its expected income from advertising in 2002 and this
year.
The Union fell short an average of more than $14,000 in expected advertising
revenue for the four other years, but that may be explained by a significant
decrease in issues printed.
In the years when the Union fell far short of its revenue expectations, it
also was noticeably under on its contracting services costs, or printing the
paper.
Dooley also said for all the long hours and hard work Union staffer members
put in, some are either underpaid or not paid at all.
A total of four Union staffers, the editor in chief, two managing editors,
and the Union distribution manager, were paid between $7.75 and $10.65 an hour,
according to the ASI Human Resources Department.
The four divvy up a budgeted part-time payroll of $19,232 for the year, with
Dooley making the most.
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