Our
View: 49er and Dig Referendum will help
media outlets
On
Feb. 15 the Student Fee Advisory Committee
approved the 49er and Dig Referendum,
a new measure that will be voted on by
you, the students, in an April ballot.
This referendum is simple and straightforward. It will ask for a $4 semesterly
fee that will sufficiently provide for increased coverage of Cal State
Long Beach in both the Daily Forty-Niner and Dig magazine. We are asking for
our fellow students to support this universal effort.
You might be asking, how exactly will this measure for these two publications
ultimately benefit the students, staff and faculty of this campus?
The purpose of the Daily Forty-Niner is to provide the 35,000 students here
at The Beach coverage of issues that affect them, stories that highlight the
ins and outs of our university in a timely and interesting manner.
We serve as an open forum by which all students, no matter their year or major,
can write news, entertainment reviews, sports coverage and
opinions about a wide variety of topics.
Currently, our lack of sufficient funding deters us from fulfilling this intended
purpose. Our budget is funded 97 percent by advertisements. We receive next
to no funding from any other source.
This means the amount of room to run stories depends on how many ads go into
the paper on any particular day. When there are not enough
ads, we have less room than we have stories to run.
Due to this lack of publishing space, some stories are held for days or never
reach the printed page despite their quality.
In past semesters, there have been complaints that too much content from U-Wire,
an online news service that gathers stories from other American university
papers, appeared in the paper. Consequently, some felt our campus newspaper
was neglecting its commitment to provide enough campus news.
These accusations are simply no longer true. So far this semester there have
only been two U-Wire articles published in the news section. All
other news articles concern or come directly from The Beach, and are written
by staff or contributing writers for the Daily Forty-Niner.
Money generated from the 49er and Dig Referendum will allow us to serve you
better. There will be a 12-page paper on a daily basis. Within it will be an
eight-page regular section and a four-page insert highlighting various events,
people and issues affecting the campus.
For example, every Monday, the four-pager will include sports coverage from
the previous weekend’s sporting events. This will be of interest in particular
to our student-athletes; currently, we cannot publish some of the weekend sports
stories until the middle of the week due to space constraints.
Additionally, without sufficient money most pictures are printed in black and
white. The revenue from the fee will allow daily color printing as well as
the creation of online photo galleries to post multiple photos from sporting,
and eventually, all events we cover.
The fee would also allow us to pay our writers and assistant editors, who currently
work for free. We know all students need money and simply cannot work for free
while working toward their respective degrees.
This will attract more writers and on a more consistent basis. Because students
from any major can participate in these two publications, paying writers creates
more incentives and on-campus student job opportunities.
Paid, hands-on experience in your chosen profession beats flipping burgers
or steaming milk any day of the week.
A paycheck creates accountability for the writers. Instead of simply volunteering
what little time they already have between their current jobs and classes,
students can stay and work on campus. Writers will be given specific responsibilities.
They would maintain beats (constant coverage of various organizations, departments,
etc.) and would be expected to consistently write high-quality articles.
Paying writers will translate into better coverage and, ultimately, a better
newspaper.
For Dig magazine, the $4 fee will allow a 24-page issue produced once a month,
an increase of eight pages from the current 16-page issue produced once a month.
The fee will also allow more editors to be paid in order to help produce more
content.
Let us strongly emphasize this is a very different referendum than what was
presented to the Associated Students Senate last year, which was not passed
or even allowed to go on the ballot for students to vote on.
Last year’s referendum asked for money to go toward several student media
outlets on campus. However, because other forms of media on campus were already
funded through various means, they were not included in the referendum this
year.
Things are being done differently this year for the better of everyone.
This year’s referendum was presented directly to the Student Fee Advisory
Committee for two reasons. First, the purpose of this committee is to consider
and discuss student fees. Any group on campus can make a referendum and propose
a fee to this committee.
Second, by creating a student fee specifically for the Daily Forty-Niner and
Dig magazine, each publication would be able to maintain editorial independence
from any other student organization on campus. This is crucial to maintaining
an open forum as our national democracy allows us to.
But above all, we do not want the students to think our ship is sinking and
the Daily Forty-Niner and Dig magazine will die an untimely death if this is
not passed.
This referendum possesses a potential to provide the students with publications
that can be everything students look for in a newspaper or magazine, and perhaps
more.
Any referendum-related questions can be e-mailed to 49er.dig@gmail.com.
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