I’d like to take this space to do something a bit out of the ordinary this week. The evening of our Thursday publication date, I’ll be presenting to our student senate, asking our representatives to consider a proposal that has the potential to be among the more important initiatives in the Exponent’s recent history.
While it concerns a set of largely administrative shifts that will, pending senators’ support, play out over the coming months, the proposal (available in full at http://goo.gl/NoOf7) represents an essential part of our publication’s route into the future. As a result, I feel obligated to use this opportunity to both explain the request and provide context for it. If our readers would forgive me a stint of rhetorical self-promotion, I’ll begin with the latter:
The Context
As I’ve bragged about before in this space, the Exponent was recently named a finalist in the Associated Collegiate Press 2011 Pacemaker competition, ranking us among the top weekly student publications in the country. More importantly, we have a growing, passionate staff representing an extraordinary breadth and depth of talent.
Our scrappy little publication — operating without the support of a journalism program at a state school best known for its technical curriculum and skiing — has shown that we can measure up to peers at far more prestigious universities. In that, I like to think we provide our campus with something worth being proud of.
But that short-term success is not enough, on its own. We must find a way to maintain it.
Every edition we print, after all — despite the hundreds of hours involved in its production — is in large part consigned to recycle bins within a week or two of publication. While we can (and, I hope, do) provide our readers with insight and move them to laughter and on occasion inspire tangible change with our words, our value resides in large part with the quality of the issue on our newsstands. Newsprint laurels are not sturdy enough to rest on.
The challenge before our staff, therefore, is to institutionalize our success, finding ways our publication can be at least as worth being proud of five years from now as it is this week. We have to look beyond the crush of our weekly production cycle — and beyond the talents of individuals who will move on with time and graduation.
While success there will rely on in-house initiative from our staff, it also requires a measure of institutional support — hence the need for revisiting our relationship with ASMSU.
The Issues
The Exponent’s current financial relationship with student government, which involves our annual operating budget being set by the ASMSU Senate, represents a serious conflict of interest given our role as a media organization. While we exist in no small part to hold student government publicly accountable for its decisions, student senators have direct control over the funding available for our staff’s pay.
We have been fortunate to have student representatives in recent years who treat that relationship responsibly (and, with rare exceptions, tolerate criticism with a remarkable degree of dignity), but the opportunity nonetheless exists for student politicians to use that power to exert pressure on our content. Despite provision in the student constitution for our freedom of press, no institutional mechanism exists to mediate a potential conflict.
Furthermore, the Exponent has, at times in recent years, suffered from the lack of a strong mentoring structure for our staff members, particularly with regards to business management. As recently as 2010, the publication has run significant budget deficits, and we face a significant challenge in adapting our business model to a rapidly-changing media industry.
A Solution
Both issues can be addressed in large part by restructuring the Exponent’s financial structure so the publication operates as one of student government’s ‘dollar committees,’ funded by a designated student fee similarly to the ASMSU Sustainability Center.
Responsibility for operational and fiscal oversight of the publication could then be shifted from the student senate to a media board composed of media professionals and ASMSU representatives, mitigating the conflict of interest while providing an opportunity for more consistent mentoring of staff members. Substituting a nominal student fee directly supporting the Exponent for a portion of ASMSU’s general activity fee would provide the publication with a reliable subsidy without placing an additional financial burden on students.
For better or worse, space forces me to leave things at that in this space. I’d invite any reader interested in exploring the issue further to read our full proposal at the link listed above, or attend my presentation Thursday, Oct. 27 at 6pm in SUB 235. As always, I can also be reached with questions or concerns at editor@exponent.montana.edu.
