Media giant Gannett buys 2nd student newspaper
Gannett Co. purchased the University of Central Florida's independent student newspaper last Tuesday in the publishing conglomerate's second purchase of a Florida student newspaper in as many years.
The Central Florida Future, which publishes three times a week with a circulation of 15,000, became financially independent of the university in 1992 and was bought in 2001 by two Florida businessmen, who turned the student newspaper into a for-profit business.
Gannett - which owns the USA Today, the newspaper with the nation's largest circulation, as well as almost 1,000 other newspapers - bought the Future for an undisclosed amount, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Along with its purchase of UCF's student newspaper, Gannett bought two other small central Florida publications owned by the same men.
Last year, Gannett bought Florida State University's independent student newspaper, FSView & Florida Flambeau, in the first purchase of an independent student newspaper by a major media company.
Despite concerns about how corporate control of a student newspaper might affect editorial decisions, media experts told Inside Higher Ed, an online higher education news source, and the Sentinel that the purchases likely don't reflect a trend because, unlike most student newspapers, FSU and UCF's newspapers were previously bought by local businessmen and turned into for-profit enterprises.
U. Missouri newspaper to sue over funding cuts
The weekly student newspaper at the University of Missouri-Rolla will sue the university after its budget was cut by about one-third last November.
The school's student council, which controls funding for student activities, cut the Missouri Miner's budget by more than $10,000, claiming the paper's quality had been hindered by grammatically incorrect and biased content.
Campus administrators later approved the student council's entire student activities budget. Editors at the Miner set a Feb. 19 deadline for administrators to restore funding in order to avoid a lawsuit.
Christopher Stryker, editor in chief of the Miner, told The Herald that administrators refused to restore the funding and that the paper would go forward with the suit.
According to a news release from the Student Press Law Center, an advocacy group helping the paper litigate its case, the paper's issues have been cut down to between 14 and 16 pages instead of the previous 22, and it can no longer afford to run as many color pages.
"We have been trying to work with the administration to resolve things, but it has begun to feel like we're negotiating with a gun to our head," Stryker told the Miner last week. "It doesn't seem like we're going to get anything resolved with the processes we have been going through. We've tried to avoid it, but legal action is the only recourse we see left."
Dow Jones opens summer programs to white students after lawsuit
The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund will admit white students to its summer journalism programs - previously offered only to minority students - as part of a settlement last week with an anti-affirmative action group.
The fund is the non-profit arm of Dow Jones & Company, which owns the Wall Street Journal, among other newspapers. It has run "summer minority workshops" at more than a dozen colleges for nearly 40 years in order to draw minority students into journalism.
The federal lawsuit was filed by the Center for Individual Rights last September on behalf of a 15-year-old Caucasian girl who was rejected from one of the programs because of her race. The suit claimed Dow Jones, Media General and Virginia Commonwealth University went beyond normal, legal affirmative-action practices by prohibiting admission of white students.
Originally, Dow Jones' rules for the program stated, "each participant must be a minority (defined as U.S. citizens who are black, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaskan Native)." According to the CIR, Dow Jones once considered and apparently rejected a proposal to admit a limited number of non-minority students to "improve multi-cultural understanding."
As part of the settlement, Dow Jones must continue to fund the journalism programs for at least three more years, the student named in the lawsuit must be admitted to the program next summer and the three parties to the suit must pay CIR's $25,000 in legal fees.
Terence Pell, CIR's president, commended the parties for quickly settling. "The settlement saves the taxpayers significant legal expense and ensures that this summer's programs will be open to all, regardless of race," he said in a news release.
